| There's clearly merit to both arguments. Is Apple making a fortune by not having a competitive marketplace for software on iOS? Of course they are. The hardest aspect of this to defend, and it's obviously not a use case that Epic are going to push because it hurts their potential to profit from this, is blocking services like xCloud and Stadia. Those services aren't downloading software to the user's device, and much like Netflix, the user is accessing a content catalogue administered and provided elsewhere. Epic doesn't want democracy on Android and iOS, it wants its own store on both devices so it has a competitive advantage over both companies everywhere (if I can buy an app or a game from Epic rather than Apple, and know I can take that purchase with me to other platforms like Windows/Playstation or even if I switch phone eco-systems, that's what I'm going to do as a consumer). A ruling in Epic's favour would almost certainly get the Epic store onto games consoles, too. Essentially it does boil down to greedy corporation vs. greedy corporation. Part of me hopes that Epic wins both cases if only to force Google and Apple to separate their income streams from the security model, but Apple's not wrong here. Most users wouldn't understand any of what I've just said and won't take the time to learn so they are a danger to themselves. You would also be trusting Epic to curate content to the extent that Apple does when they have no financial incentive to do so, which is IMHO why the Play Store is so full of garbage. |
Fortnite was a 5bn/year game that made only 7% of its revenue on iOS, but much more on consoles. This is just a the beginning of a huge fight over a market that has grown incredibly huge, and Epic having realised that access to hardware is crucial to their further growth.
I mean, they could simply make their own, but perhaps that's more risky than suing Apple, Sony, MS for access to their platforms.