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Epic Games to Charge 12% Fee for App Sales From Alternative iPhone Store

Sophisticatednut said:
When Apple removes the CTF we can finally get rid of many of the subscription based apps. Now developers can finally provide apps for free without the need to pay a yearly 99$ developer fee.

Apple is forcing free apps to earn money
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Why would I want to publish a free app and make no money? What’s in it for me? How do I earn for living?

I would either sell apps with high prices or use subscription fee. My family needs food and I have to pay bills.

But I think I’m missing your point
 
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kiv.atso said:
Why would I want to publish a free app and make no money? What’s in it for me? How do I earn for living?

I would either sell apps with high prices or use subscription fee. My family needs food and I have to pay bills.

But I think I’m missing your point
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because free app is an express lane to exposure and user base which you can latch onto later with a paid app or add-ons. If you are developing a paid app from the get go it means you probably have that marketing money ready to be spent on ads and promotion. General rules is you need 7 times the money for marketing then you need for an app but in case for instant mobile apps that can easily ramp up to 77:1 ratio.
 
kiv.atso said:
Most apps are free anyway, and majority of developers aren’t making much money anyway. I doubt it can go below zero.

For subscriptions, I doubt it will ever go down. Music streaming services already pay very little to musicians, and keep the rest for themselves. Movie streaming services are going to charge more and also introduce adverts on top charging subscription fee.

Nothing is getting any cheaper. But others want a piece of the pie for free. That’s for sure
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I was referring to App store fees/commissions.
 
That is perfectly reasonable, epic doesn’t and won’t force anyone to install apps only through their store and most importantly they won’t charge anything to developers who choose to use other stores or the web unlike Apple, with their pathetic attempts to force people to pay a nonsense ‘core technology fee’, predictably quickly shot down by the eu.
 
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kiv.atso said:
I would either sell apps with high prices or use subscription fee. My family needs food and I have to pay bills.

But I think I’m missing your point
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Have you seriously never done anything out of the kindness of your own to other people? Or do you always take payment for doing anything ?

Wikipedia is something done for free and only runs on free donations.
kiv.atso said:
Why would I want to publish a free app and make no money? What’s in it for me? How do I earn for living?
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People publish free applications all the time because they want to help people for free as they sometimes have passion projects and want to share their ideas with others.

Open source project are free contributions to the community.

Apple Open Source

opensource.apple.com opensource.apple.com

Recommended extensions – Add-ons for Firefox (en-US)

addons.mozilla.org addons.mozilla.org
People do things on their spare time, students who do projects, people who solved problems they had and shared it on GitHub etc.
But people can’t do that if they need to pay fees just to allow the apps to run.
 
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aeneas07 said:
No one forces a user to buy an iPhone. A user chooses to purchase an iPhone and the lock-in that comes with it. Everyone knows exactly what they are getting why they buy an iPhone and that is why many people CHOOSE not to buy one.
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I'd guess that the majority of iPhone users have no idea how any of this works.
 
kiv.atso said:
For subscriptions, I doubt it will ever go down. Music streaming services already pay very little to musicians, and keep the rest for themselves.
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They pay ~70% to the to the rights holders. Which is why Spotify couldn't give 30% to Apple without raising their prices.
 
MacCheetah3 said:
Average Epic Games Director yearly pay in the United States is approximately $269,000, which is 166% above the national average.
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Salary information comes from 1 data point collected directly from employees, users, and past and present job advertisements on Indeed in the past 24 months.

Wow, one whole data point!
 
coolfactor said:
Another word for business is "trade". Trade = You give something to get something.

What has Apple been giving for their commission?
  • A super-popular range of hardware products that are effortless and pain-free for consumers to use.
  • A trusted distribution, installation and updating process.
  • Annual software updates and new features.
  • Advertising of apps through a trusted marketplaced.
  • Free customer support on behalf of the developer.
What does Epic give for their commission?
  • A trusted distribution, installation and updating process — ?
  • Advertising of apps — ?
  • Customer support — ?
I'm genuinely curious what Epic is giving that benefits developers and consumers? I don't know because I've never used their storefront.
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As a developer myself I wouldn’t
kiv.atso said:
Mac doesn’t matter much because the majority of developers are on iOS. Most of ‘native’ Mac apps are crappy web apps wrapped with electron native wrapper. A very sad state. Only few Mac apps are truly native (graphics, video, 3d etc), unlike on iOS.

Apple would have done the same with Mac if it was worth it.
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Are most iOS apps, socials etc not just web wrappers though?
 
9059737 said:
Before Apple fans get confused again and start calling Epic hypocritical: the key difference is that Epic is not a gatekeeper and does not have complete control over game distribution. If developers don't like these terms they're free to use web distribution or alternative stores. That's how competition in a free and open market works.
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Isn't that how Apple works now anyway? You can buy stuff on the web without paying the added 30% premium in the app store. I buy youtube premium, hulu/disney+ etc directly without paying any app store mark up and access those services across all my Apple devices.
 
CarAnalogy said:
But a million "app stores" is the worst possible solution and nobody wants this except the big companies that started these suits. It's all about money. What users want is actual software freedom. But nobody wants that for the users.
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Only a small handful will be successful, and almost everything will still be available on the Apple App store.

I have 7 gaming app stores on my PC, plus a couple of one-offs that weren't initially in an app store, like Minecraft

  • Steam - General all around best store.
  • Epic - Offers a free game or two each week. Has the best discounts during sales, subsidized by Epic.
  • GOG - Offers older games that have been updated to work on modern computers. Now offers modern games as well. DRM-free: you can download installers and use them offline without using a gaming client.
  • Humble - Offers bundles of games at a discount. I don't use them as much because they abandoned initial features like always being DRM free.
  • itch.io - Mostly smaller independent games. They've had a few massive bundles of games where all revenue when to charities. I also occasionally play free games on their site through the web browser.
  • Xbox / Game Pass - Subscription service.
  • Amazon Games - Free games for Prime Subscribers. You can keep the games even after your Prime subscription expires.
I understand, many people wouldn't want to deal with all those stores, but the vast majority of games I play from the other stores are also available on Steam. Steam alone has a bigger and better variety of games than any other game platform, including closed ones like on the iPhone or consoles.

All of these stores/platforms have public APIs, and there are a couple of apps (Playnite, GOG Galaxy) that can show you all the games you own across all the major platforms.
 
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kiv.atso said:
Mac doesn’t matter much because the majority of developers are on iOS. Most of ‘native’ Mac apps are crappy web apps wrapped with electron native wrapper. A very sad state. Only few Mac apps are truly native (graphics, video, 3d etc), unlike on iOS.

Apple would have done the same with Mac if it was worth it.
Click to expand...
That should tell you all you need to know about the quality of the AppStore and apples developer agreements.

Heck game devs rather publish their games anywhere but the Macappstore
 
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Sophisticatednut said:
Well developers who use the unreal engine who earns 1million pays 5% licensing fee, distributing it through the epic store and they pay 0%.

The unreal engine can be used for iOS, android, windows, Mac , Linux, steanOS.

What can Xcode be used for?
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It can be used to make applications that appeal to the majority of the audience of smartphone users not the minority of the smartphone gamers.
 
Epic shouldn't be allowed to charge anything. Apple should put all there apps in their store and then sue when they charge them
 
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