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| Epic Games *fucked up* a chance to fix the iPhone econosphere by Commander Tansin A. Darcos 09/12/2022, 10:22am PDT | ||||
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| Awhile ago, Epic Games got disgusted by Apple's high-handed business practice - which they had agreed to when they offered Fortnite for the iPhone - and decided to quit paying Apple's extortionate 30% merchant fee to process in-game transactions by credit card. If any of you have ever used PayPal to sell something, the usual fee for on-line credit card processing is 3% plus 33c.
Well, the contract you have to agree to with Apple in order to offer in-game transactions, requires you to use them to process all in-app purchases. This is why Netflix's iPhone app won't allow you to purchase or renew the service through the App. You have to use a browser to do that. You can still watch the service, you just can't purchase anything through it. Netflix is unwilling to either pay an excessive fee for processing renewals and other payments through the app, or raise the price by 30%. Well, anyway, Epic switched from using Apple to their own merchant Account, for in-app purchases made in Fortnite. Apple told them to quit doing that. Epic refused, and Apple removed Epic's offerings, including unrelated things. So Epic decides to sue. There is a class of law in the US, Europe and elsewhere, that requires companies to act responsibly with respect to vendors, competitors and customers. The primary law is the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1990. It requires that, when operating your business, you do not do things that injure competitors. Certain practices are illegal. These include: * "Tying contracts" in which to be able to get one thing you have to accept something else. Apple's requirement to use their payment processing system in order to allow a game on iPhones is clearly a tying contract. * Use unfair means to block competition. Nobody else can operate an app store for iPhone, becuse apple locks iPhones from being able to install applications from anywhere else. (Unless you have the know how to "jailbreak" your iPhone.) * Because Apple has a stranglehold on the iPhone app market, customers can't go elsewhere. This is restraint of trade. Well, Epic suing would have been a good idea - if they had done it before signing Apple's contract. Or sue without violating the requirement to use Apple's payment system. But, because Epic had violated its contract, it had "unclean hands." This means that Epic had acted improperly, and so it lost the ability to sue. Of all the companies Apple might have had to fight a lawsuit over, Epic, with over $200 million in profit from Fortnite alone, had the money and resources to afford to fight a company worth US$2 trillion. Epic fucked it up, and fucked it up badly. |
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Epic Games *fucked up* a chance to fix the iPhone econosphere by 09/12/2022, 10:22am PDT  Judge, wheel this man into the courtroom! by 09/13/2022, 10:55am PDT |
