[Barrin92]

>Two very resourceful companies are fighting over money.

Epic appears to be valued at 17-ish billion. Apple is the largest company on earth.

Comparing their sizes, that's something like the People's Republic of China fighting with New Zealand.

I've seen this strange attempt of comparing Epic to Apple before though, as if a single individual games company actually has the same resources as the company controlling a significant part of the global computing infrastructure

[zepto]

Nobody says they have the same resources.

But a $17B company has all the resources it needs to fight a lawsuit, bully, buy press, etc.

[Barrin92]

They don't just need resources to fight the lawsuit, they also need the resources to take the hit of essentially being cut off from half of their North American customers. How many companies do you think can do that for a long time over years long law suits even if they're fairly large?

The lawsuit is a drop in the bucket compared the sustained economic damage that Apple causes by simply turning the light switch off. And this is where the size matters, because Apple can easily sever every individual developer, while the reverse is not true.

[zepto]

Epic themselves have stated that iOS is nowhere near half of their North American customers.

As for the lights being turned off - Epic did that to themselves. Even after filing the lawsuit they were given the option to remain in the store, by both Apple, and the court, as long as the returned to compliance with the rule. They would have been able to continue their lawsuit while still shipping through the App Store.

Epic is completely responsible for the damage to their own business and to their customers. They were given the option to continue both the lawsuit, and to sell through the App Store, which they declined.

As for being cut off from customers. It’s worth considering that Epic is part owned by TenCent, and must remain on good terms with them if they want to retain access to the Chinese market.

The totality of the Chinese market is larger than the iOS segment of the US market. There is no reason to suppose that this move is not driven by the desire of the CCP to reduce Apple’s power.

That would be a good explanation for why they are continuing to harm their iOS customers when they don’t otherwise have to. Perhaps they chose to take that hit because it’s less than the hit they would take if they were forced to exit China.

[scarface74]

Less than 10% of Fortnite’s revenue comes from iOS according to Epic. Epic’s market is not mobile. It’s market includes consoles and PCs. Epic is the last company that can say that Apple has a “monopoly” on the market it cares about.

[minhazm]

Epic Games is > 50% owned by Tim Sweeney, and 40% owned by Tencent. Tencent's current market cap is $654 billion.