**The Epic Apple-Google Conundrum: A 30% Cut Dilemma**

In recent days, a heated debate has erupted between tech giants Apple and Google on one hand, and indie game developer Epic Games on the other. The dispute revolves around a contentious issue of commission fees, commonly known as the "App Store" cut. For years, Apple and Google have taken a 30% commission from app sales made through their respective stores. However, this seemingly standard practice has been challenged by Epic Games, which claims that the percentage should be adjusted based on the size of the company.

Epic's stance is rooted in the argument that large companies like itself, which generate significant revenue and drive Apple's ecosystem, should pay a lower commission rate compared to smaller developers. The company asserts that this arrangement would lead to more affordable prices for consumers while allowing them to maintain control over their own app stores. In other words, Epic wants to offer its own in-app purchase system without being forced to pay the 30% cut to Apple or Google.

On the other hand, Apple and Google argue that their commission rates are necessary to cover the costs associated with maintaining the App Store platform. These costs include development, sales, marketing, and customer support, which add up to a significant amount. The companies claim that without these fees, they would not be able to sustain their business models and continue to provide services to developers and consumers alike.

The situation has sparked a contentious debate among gamers, with some expressing frustration at the seemingly unfair arrangement. For those who currently have Fortnite installed on their iPhone, it is possible to continue playing until the next release date. However, come that time, the new update will no longer be available for download through the App Store or in-app purchase system. This means that users will be stuck on the current season and chapter until a resolution is reached.

The dispute has escalated to the point where Epic Games has filed a lawsuit against Apple, claiming that the removal of Fortnite from the App Store was done with the intention of stifling competition and limiting consumer choice. The company's stance appears well-thought out, with a deliberate strategy aimed at highlighting its concerns about the commission fees.

Epic's actions have sparked a heated debate on social media, with some users taking sides based on their perspective on the issue. While others may agree that Apple and Google should maintain their commission rates to ensure the financial viability of the App Store platform, many are sympathetic to Epic's cause, arguing that larger companies should be expected to contribute more to the system.

As the dispute continues to unfold, it remains to be seen how this will play out in the courts. While Epic's actions have garnered significant attention and public support, Apple's position is likely to prevail in the short term. Nevertheless, the situation highlights the need for greater transparency and negotiation between tech giants and indie developers, ensuring that all parties are treated fairly and equitably.

In the meantime, Fortnite enthusiasts can take comfort in knowing that the game is available on other platforms, such as PS4, Mac, and PC. This provides an alternative solution for those seeking to continue playing their favorite game without being tied to Apple's ecosystem.

**The Future of App Store Fees**

As the debate surrounding app store fees continues to gain momentum, it will be interesting to see how this issue plays out in the long term. Will Epic's stance on commission rates lead to a shift in the way the App Store platform operates? Or will Apple and Google maintain their current approach, which may appeal to consumers but limits consumer choice and stifle innovation?

One thing is certain: the situation has sparked an important conversation about fairness, competition, and consumer rights in the tech industry. As the dispute continues to unfold, it will be essential to keep a close eye on developments and weigh in with our thoughts and opinions.

**The Fallout for Consumers**

For consumers, the impact of this dispute is already being felt. The removal of Fortnite from the App Store has left many gamers without access to their favorite game. While some may view this as an inconvenience, others are more concerned about the precedent set by Apple and Google's actions.

As the situation continues to evolve, it will be essential for consumers to stay informed about the latest developments and weigh in with their opinions. Will this dispute lead to a wider re-evaluation of app store fees and consumer rights? Only time will tell, but one thing is certain: this issue has sparked an important conversation that will have far-reaching consequences for the tech industry as a whole.

**The Verdict on App Store Fees**

In conclusion, the controversy surrounding app store fees is a complex issue with deep roots in the tech industry. While Apple and Google argue that their commission rates are necessary to sustain the App Store platform, Epic Games counters that larger companies should contribute more to ensure fairness and equality among developers.

As we move forward, it will be essential for consumers, developers, and policymakers to engage in a thoughtful discussion about app store fees and consumer rights. By prioritizing transparency, competition, and innovation, we can create a fairer and more equitable tech ecosystem that benefits all stakeholders involved.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enapple and google both just ban fortnite welcome everybody to apple insider if you didn't catch the news that happened yesterday it was a show apple and google both banned kicked out fortnite from their respective app stores apple removed them from the app store and google removed them from google play this is a huge step from all parties involved from epic on the side of fortnite for what they did and apple and google for removing them afterwards so what all happened well we're going to talk about that in this video what it means for gamers and players of fortnite going forward and those who have already downloaded those games and why each of these sides feel they are in the right and how it's all likely going to play out hey everyone andrew here now if you have not been keeping up with all these battles what happened yesterday was just a huge escalation epic seems to possibly have had a plan in place going into yesterday yesterday they issued an update for their app not through any of the app stores but just through their back-end system that they used to download game updates with fresh content doing that they introduced a new way to pay for their in-app currency v-bucks basically you could sidestep apple and google instead of paying them their commission you would pay epic directly in doing so users would be happy because they could save 20 on those in-app purchases seems just like a great deal for players but at the same time it means apple and google are kind of getting shut out they're not getting their take that is required in their app store guidelines so apple and google made the appropriate step of removing epic's game fortnite from google play and the app store as soon as that happened epic was quick to respond epic came out with a website a hashtag of free fortnight and an even a promotional video saying they were suing apple for the removal of fortnite from the app store saying it's anti-competitive and that they are basically being unfair in how they are treating their game and then it's a monopoly that apple is collecting all those fees and not giving users the choice to pay a lower price through their direct payment system but of course it's never quite as cut and dry as that so why do google and apple charge those 30 cuts well running the app store and google play isn't cheap it is not cheap nor free for apple and google to run those platforms there is a ton of work that goes into creating developer tools developer documentation developer support servers to run the app stores and downloads and the whole processes for returns just everything there is a lot involved and it costs substantial money a lot of apps on the app store are completely free allowing those developers to simply provide their apps to consumers at no cost and those apps can make money through advertising that again apple was not getting a card a part of but when it comes to paid apps or apps that have in-app purchases there's a whole different set of rules now there are goods or services to be consumed outside of the app store like you're going shopping on amazon or something like that you don't use apple or google's payment method you use their own payment method so that's why you can shop through the amazon app buy things for goods and services which then get delivered to your door you don't have to pay apple a thing for any of that but when you buy things that are directly in a game in-app currencies for example you do have to use apple as payment methods and you do have to pay apple or google their respective 30 percent cuts that 30 cut goes to cover the cost of maintaining the app store and the development uh ecosystem altogether and apple also makes a little bit money at the same time now apple has actually seen its iphone shares or iphone sales start to level off a little bit not a ton they're still selling a lot of iphones but their number of iphones has gone down a little bit not because the iphone is any less popular but because iphones hold their value for so long and work for so long that people are holding onto them longer it is not uncommon to see iphones that are six years old or more still rocking and being used so people aren't buying iphones as much as they were in the past but more people have iphones apple needs to rake in money through alternative means namely services hence apple news plus apple tv plus icloud storage all of these are services that apple provides including apple music and the app store that's right so the app store is just one of the services that apple provides to customers now customers don't necessarily want to pay for that they don't want to pay money to have the app store which is why there are things like that payment uh that thirty percent payment that goes to apple for purchase made through the app store apple's facilitating that process apple is providing the platform apple's providing the consumers it's almost like an agent for epic being able to say hey you have a game i'm going to help you get that game in front of people and you're going to give me a 30 cut for doing so apple applies those rules across the board now if it didn't what would that look like so if apple gave epic a cut so why would a large company like epic be able to get have to pay less but smaller companies have to pay more you'd have small indie developers paying a larger share of their revenue than the larger companies that also doesn't seem fair and that is apple and google's angle basically saying that 30 cut across the board no matter who you are big small anything it is completely fair level playing field the app store is completely level for all developers now epic on the other hand disagrees they don't think that it is fair at all that they're doing so much business they're bringing so many fans to the apple ecosystem that they should be paying 30 every time someone makes an in-app purchase they want to offer their own which is also cheaper epic is saying that they are inflating their price to cover apple's commission apple's 30 so it's actually costing consumers more but at the same time that's also just the cost of doing business the cost of development is the cost of sales the cost of marketing it's any of those things so it's really hard to fight on either side of this because you can always see the other person's side you can see appleside and google set for their cost and work and what they are doing you can also see from epic side epic wants to offer lower prices and not have to pay a 30 cut to apple or google they also want more control over that process they want to be able to issue refunds if they need to they want to be able to reach out to consumers directly and i can see that point as well so there are people on either side that make sense but what it means right now for gamers is not that fun so if you currently have fortnite installed on your iphone you can keep play you can continue to keep playing the current season and chapter that are out but come the next release that will no longer be able to be downloaded to your device so you can play now but when the new update comes out you won't be able to get that update whether it's through the app store or through the in app download update system so you're going to be stuck on the current season and chapter until apple google and epic figure all of this out once it's all figured out then you'll be able to play again but right now you're going to be stuck on the current season and chapter until this gets resolved so where does it go from here well as we said epic is suing apple for the removal of fortnite from the app store in fact it all seems kind of premeditated it just appears this way so far because as soon as they had that removed from the app store they were immediately out with their lawsuit with a video declaring what they were doing parodying apple's 1984 ad they were out with a whole website that explains what is going on and how people can fight against apple everything seemed very well thought out as far as what they expected apple to do and how they were going to respond epic is no dummy here they knew exactly what they were doing at least that's what it appears like based on how everything kind of unfolded so that's where we are at the moment the fortnite game has been removed from the app store and google play apple and google are not going to acquiesce and allow it back in especially with a lower percentage there because they want to keep everything equal for everyone and epic does not sound like they want to come back either epic does not want to come back to the app store without apple or google relaxing that restriction on them and in the meantime they are suing apple for control and being able to do that so that's where we're at and where it's going to go we don't know how his lawsuit is going to play out as it stands it appears that apple may have the upper legal edge even though they may lose in the court of public opinion so what that will inevitably mean we aren't quite sure it really is going to be up to epic and apple and google to sort all of this out with the gamers caught in the crosshair fortunately fortnite is available on many many other platforms aside from ios so if you have any of those other devices around your ps4 your mac your pc any of those go jump on those and you can play fortnite as well i wonder what you guys think this is going to be a heated debate so let's keep things civil down in the comments but let me know which side you're on which side makes most sense to you and let me know on twitter let's chat about this in a civilized manner as well at andrew underscore osu other than that we'll catch you guys in the next video youapple and google both just ban fortnite welcome everybody to apple insider if you didn't catch the news that happened yesterday it was a show apple and google both banned kicked out fortnite from their respective app stores apple removed them from the app store and google removed them from google play this is a huge step from all parties involved from epic on the side of fortnite for what they did and apple and google for removing them afterwards so what all happened well we're going to talk about that in this video what it means for gamers and players of fortnite going forward and those who have already downloaded those games and why each of these sides feel they are in the right and how it's all likely going to play out hey everyone andrew here now if you have not been keeping up with all these battles what happened yesterday was just a huge escalation epic seems to possibly have had a plan in place going into yesterday yesterday they issued an update for their app not through any of the app stores but just through their back-end system that they used to download game updates with fresh content doing that they introduced a new way to pay for their in-app currency v-bucks basically you could sidestep apple and google instead of paying them their commission you would pay epic directly in doing so users would be happy because they could save 20 on those in-app purchases seems just like a great deal for players but at the same time it means apple and google are kind of getting shut out they're not getting their take that is required in their app store guidelines so apple and google made the appropriate step of removing epic's game fortnite from google play and the app store as soon as that happened epic was quick to respond epic came out with a website a hashtag of free fortnight and an even a promotional video saying they were suing apple for the removal of fortnite from the app store saying it's anti-competitive and that they are basically being unfair in how they are treating their game and then it's a monopoly that apple is collecting all those fees and not giving users the choice to pay a lower price through their direct payment system but of course it's never quite as cut and dry as that so why do google and apple charge those 30 cuts well running the app store and google play isn't cheap it is not cheap nor free for apple and google to run those platforms there is a ton of work that goes into creating developer tools developer documentation developer support servers to run the app stores and downloads and the whole processes for returns just everything there is a lot involved and it costs substantial money a lot of apps on the app store are completely free allowing those developers to simply provide their apps to consumers at no cost and those apps can make money through advertising that again apple was not getting a card a part of but when it comes to paid apps or apps that have in-app purchases there's a whole different set of rules now there are goods or services to be consumed outside of the app store like you're going shopping on amazon or something like that you don't use apple or google's payment method you use their own payment method so that's why you can shop through the amazon app buy things for goods and services which then get delivered to your door you don't have to pay apple a thing for any of that but when you buy things that are directly in a game in-app currencies for example you do have to use apple as payment methods and you do have to pay apple or google their respective 30 percent cuts that 30 cut goes to cover the cost of maintaining the app store and the development uh ecosystem altogether and apple also makes a little bit money at the same time now apple has actually seen its iphone shares or iphone sales start to level off a little bit not a ton they're still selling a lot of iphones but their number of iphones has gone down a little bit not because the iphone is any less popular but because iphones hold their value for so long and work for so long that people are holding onto them longer it is not uncommon to see iphones that are six years old or more still rocking and being used so people aren't buying iphones as much as they were in the past but more people have iphones apple needs to rake in money through alternative means namely services hence apple news plus apple tv plus icloud storage all of these are services that apple provides including apple music and the app store that's right so the app store is just one of the services that apple provides to customers now customers don't necessarily want to pay for that they don't want to pay money to have the app store which is why there are things like that payment uh that thirty percent payment that goes to apple for purchase made through the app store apple's facilitating that process apple is providing the platform apple's providing the consumers it's almost like an agent for epic being able to say hey you have a game i'm going to help you get that game in front of people and you're going to give me a 30 cut for doing so apple applies those rules across the board now if it didn't what would that look like so if apple gave epic a cut so why would a large company like epic be able to get have to pay less but smaller companies have to pay more you'd have small indie developers paying a larger share of their revenue than the larger companies that also doesn't seem fair and that is apple and google's angle basically saying that 30 cut across the board no matter who you are big small anything it is completely fair level playing field the app store is completely level for all developers now epic on the other hand disagrees they don't think that it is fair at all that they're doing so much business they're bringing so many fans to the apple ecosystem that they should be paying 30 every time someone makes an in-app purchase they want to offer their own which is also cheaper epic is saying that they are inflating their price to cover apple's commission apple's 30 so it's actually costing consumers more but at the same time that's also just the cost of doing business the cost of development is the cost of sales the cost of marketing it's any of those things so it's really hard to fight on either side of this because you can always see the other person's side you can see appleside and google set for their cost and work and what they are doing you can also see from epic side epic wants to offer lower prices and not have to pay a 30 cut to apple or google they also want more control over that process they want to be able to issue refunds if they need to they want to be able to reach out to consumers directly and i can see that point as well so there are people on either side that make sense but what it means right now for gamers is not that fun so if you currently have fortnite installed on your iphone you can keep play you can continue to keep playing the current season and chapter that are out but come the next release that will no longer be able to be downloaded to your device so you can play now but when the new update comes out you won't be able to get that update whether it's through the app store or through the in app download update system so you're going to be stuck on the current season and chapter until apple google and epic figure all of this out once it's all figured out then you'll be able to play again but right now you're going to be stuck on the current season and chapter until this gets resolved so where does it go from here well as we said epic is suing apple for the removal of fortnite from the app store in fact it all seems kind of premeditated it just appears this way so far because as soon as they had that removed from the app store they were immediately out with their lawsuit with a video declaring what they were doing parodying apple's 1984 ad they were out with a whole website that explains what is going on and how people can fight against apple everything seemed very well thought out as far as what they expected apple to do and how they were going to respond epic is no dummy here they knew exactly what they were doing at least that's what it appears like based on how everything kind of unfolded so that's where we are at the moment the fortnite game has been removed from the app store and google play apple and google are not going to acquiesce and allow it back in especially with a lower percentage there because they want to keep everything equal for everyone and epic does not sound like they want to come back either epic does not want to come back to the app store without apple or google relaxing that restriction on them and in the meantime they are suing apple for control and being able to do that so that's where we're at and where it's going to go we don't know how his lawsuit is going to play out as it stands it appears that apple may have the upper legal edge even though they may lose in the court of public opinion so what that will inevitably mean we aren't quite sure it really is going to be up to epic and apple and google to sort all of this out with the gamers caught in the crosshair fortunately fortnite is available on many many other platforms aside from ios so if you have any of those other devices around your ps4 your mac your pc any of those go jump on those and you can play fortnite as well i wonder what you guys think this is going to be a heated debate so let's keep things civil down in the comments but let me know which side you're on which side makes most sense to you and let me know on twitter let's chat about this in a civilized manner as well at andrew underscore osu other than that we'll catch you guys in the next video youapple and google both just ban fortnite welcome everybody to apple insider if you didn't catch the news that happened yesterday it was a show apple and google both banned kicked out fortnite from their respective app stores apple removed them from the app store and google removed them from google play this is a huge step from all parties involved from epic on the side of fortnite for what they did and apple and google for removing them afterwards so what all happened well we're going to talk about that in this video what it means for gamers and players of fortnite going forward and those who have already downloaded those games and why each of these sides feel they are in the right and how it's all likely going to play out hey everyone andrew here now if you have not been keeping up with all these battles what happened yesterday was just a huge escalation epic seems to possibly have had a plan in place going into yesterday yesterday they issued an update for their app not through any of the app stores but just through their back-end system that they used to download game updates with fresh content doing that they introduced a new way to pay for their in-app currency v-bucks basically you could sidestep apple and google instead of paying them their commission you would pay epic directly in doing so users would be happy because they could save 20 on those in-app purchases seems just like a great deal for players but at the same time it means apple and google are kind of getting shut out they're not getting their take that is required in their app store guidelines so apple and google made the appropriate step of removing epic's game fortnite from google play and the app store as soon as that happened epic was quick to respond epic came out with a website a hashtag of free fortnight and an even a promotional video saying they were suing apple for the removal of fortnite from the app store saying it's anti-competitive and that they are basically being unfair in how they are treating their game and then it's a monopoly that apple is collecting all those fees and not giving users the choice to pay a lower price through their direct payment system but of course it's never quite as cut and dry as that so why do google and apple charge those 30 cuts well running the app store and google play isn't cheap it is not cheap nor free for apple and google to run those platforms there is a ton of work that goes into creating developer tools developer documentation developer support servers to run the app stores and downloads and the whole processes for returns just everything there is a lot involved and it costs substantial money a lot of apps on the app store are completely free allowing those developers to simply provide their apps to consumers at no cost and those apps can make money through advertising that again apple was not getting a card a part of but when it comes to paid apps or apps that have in-app purchases there's a whole different set of rules now there are goods or services to be consumed outside of the app store like you're going shopping on amazon or something like that you don't use apple or google's payment method you use their own payment method so that's why you can shop through the amazon app buy things for goods and services which then get delivered to your door you don't have to pay apple a thing for any of that but when you buy things that are directly in a game in-app currencies for example you do have to use apple as payment methods and you do have to pay apple or google their respective 30 percent cuts that 30 cut goes to cover the cost of maintaining the app store and the development uh ecosystem altogether and apple also makes a little bit money at the same time now apple has actually seen its iphone shares or iphone sales start to level off a little bit not a ton they're still selling a lot of iphones but their number of iphones has gone down a little bit not because the iphone is any less popular but because iphones hold their value for so long and work for so long that people are holding onto them longer it is not uncommon to see iphones that are six years old or more still rocking and being used so people aren't buying iphones as much as they were in the past but more people have iphones apple needs to rake in money through alternative means namely services hence apple news plus apple tv plus icloud storage all of these are services that apple provides including apple music and the app store that's right so the app store is just one of the services that apple provides to customers now customers don't necessarily want to pay for that they don't want to pay money to have the app store which is why there are things like that payment uh that thirty percent payment that goes to apple for purchase made through the app store apple's facilitating that process apple is providing the platform apple's providing the consumers it's almost like an agent for epic being able to say hey you have a game i'm going to help you get that game in front of people and you're going to give me a 30 cut for doing so apple applies those rules across the board now if it didn't what would that look like so if apple gave epic a cut so why would a large company like epic be able to get have to pay less but smaller companies have to pay more you'd have small indie developers paying a larger share of their revenue than the larger companies that also doesn't seem fair and that is apple and google's angle basically saying that 30 cut across the board no matter who you are big small anything it is completely fair level playing field the app store is completely level for all developers now epic on the other hand disagrees they don't think that it is fair at all that they're doing so much business they're bringing so many fans to the apple ecosystem that they should be paying 30 every time someone makes an in-app purchase they want to offer their own which is also cheaper epic is saying that they are inflating their price to cover apple's commission apple's 30 so it's actually costing consumers more but at the same time that's also just the cost of doing business the cost of development is the cost of sales the cost of marketing it's any of those things so it's really hard to fight on either side of this because you can always see the other person's side you can see appleside and google set for their cost and work and what they are doing you can also see from epic side epic wants to offer lower prices and not have to pay a 30 cut to apple or google they also want more control over that process they want to be able to issue refunds if they need to they want to be able to reach out to consumers directly and i can see that point as well so there are people on either side that make sense but what it means right now for gamers is not that fun so if you currently have fortnite installed on your iphone you can keep play you can continue to keep playing the current season and chapter that are out but come the next release that will no longer be able to be downloaded to your device so you can play now but when the new update comes out you won't be able to get that update whether it's through the app store or through the in app download update system so you're going to be stuck on the current season and chapter until apple google and epic figure all of this out once it's all figured out then you'll be able to play again but right now you're going to be stuck on the current season and chapter until this gets resolved so where does it go from here well as we said epic is suing apple for the removal of fortnite from the app store in fact it all seems kind of premeditated it just appears this way so far because as soon as they had that removed from the app store they were immediately out with their lawsuit with a video declaring what they were doing parodying apple's 1984 ad they were out with a whole website that explains what is going on and how people can fight against apple everything seemed very well thought out as far as what they expected apple to do and how they were going to respond epic is no dummy here they knew exactly what they were doing at least that's what it appears like based on how everything kind of unfolded so that's where we are at the moment the fortnite game has been removed from the app store and google play apple and google are not going to acquiesce and allow it back in especially with a lower percentage there because they want to keep everything equal for everyone and epic does not sound like they want to come back either epic does not want to come back to the app store without apple or google relaxing that restriction on them and in the meantime they are suing apple for control and being able to do that so that's where we're at and where it's going to go we don't know how his lawsuit is going to play out as it stands it appears that apple may have the upper legal edge even though they may lose in the court of public opinion so what that will inevitably mean we aren't quite sure it really is going to be up to epic and apple and google to sort all of this out with the gamers caught in the crosshair fortunately fortnite is available on many many other platforms aside from ios so if you have any of those other devices around your ps4 your mac your pc any of those go jump on those and you can play fortnite as well i wonder what you guys think this is going to be a heated debate so let's keep things civil down in the comments but let me know which side you're on which side makes most sense to you and let me know on twitter let's chat about this in a civilized manner as well at andrew underscore osu other than that we'll catch you guys in the next video you\n"