Thread by @dsmart

There will be no peace in these lands.

Apple officially unplugs Epic from the App Store | Engadget engadget.com/apple-epic-app…

And just like that, aside from the Unreal engine which is a different license account, making good on its threat, Apple pulls all Epic games from its store.

Which is precisely what I had said they would do because they have the rights to do that when a developer or publisher violates a ToS. It's not product specific; it's corp specific.

And if the judge didn't regard their pulling Unreal Engine as retaliatory, that license would have been revoked as well; thus shutting out not only the games but also every iOS game that uses UE.

If only Epic hadn't willfully breached the ToS they agreed to, thus invoking an all-out war which, imo they now stand **zero** chance of winning, this farce would have been isolated to a single game (Fortnite) as has been in the past.

This is very bad.

This takes me back to years ago when Epic did the **same** thing to Silicon Knights, and put them out of business. Except that small developer didn't have other income or investor money bags to help sustain them thereafter.

What most people are missing in this picture is that before we saw the emails, nobody could have guessed that Epic premeditated all of this, thus putting themselves in a much weaker defensive position and giving Apple an even bigger upper hand.

And just like that, the narrative changed from the outlook that Epic was trying to fight for what's right and just in terms of unfair business practices and monopolistic activities to what we have now.

It was a huge gamble, they had one shot - and I believe they blew it.

It didn't have to be this way; and that's the utterly maddening and disappointing part of this. Now, instead of talking about the crap Epic pulled, we would've been talking about much bigger & consequential things like unfair business & monopolistic practices by Apple.

This is the thing with capitalism, there's always more money to be made; and when you have deep pocket investors to answer to there's always the need to perform.

I don't know about you, but if most of us had a game that's making numbers like Fortnite on iOS, we would gladly pay 30c on the Dollar to keep selling it there. And thousands of app devs do just that; though some do grumble.

It's the same thing with Epic's own game store. No matter how good the royalty split is most devs will never consider leaving Steam and it's massive community because most of us work with math & metrics.

Paying Steam 30% for access to n million gamers, vs paying EGS 12% for access to n-1 is attractive - if you get the reach. Most don't - and they know it. Epic knew this too, which is why they started paying for exclusive content.

That's precisely how Valve seeded Steam using their own games.

If you can make money selling $70 on Steam after Valve takes 30%, what's the incentive to make $50 on EGS after Epic takes 12%? None. It's all about gamer outreach and loyalty.

Then Epic sweetened the pot even more with free weekly games and by covering the licensing costs of using UE and selling on EGS.

These are ALL good things because competition is good for everyone, and it breeds innovation and progress.

Like everyone else, for decades Epic was happily paying 30% (or less) to Valve, Apple, Microsoft etc because they were still profitable.

Until someone figured out that you can make more money by running your own store.

Most of us who sell PC games on various stores make more money on Steam than on any other store. In fact, for a time, all my games sold more directly from our store (powered by Digital River). To the extent that selling a game on a store outside Steam is just derivative income.

That's not a bad thing. But the issue is that gamers are tribalistic to an ungodly level; and their loyalty to a platform, dev or whatever the latest gaming fad is, remains unmatched outside of a psych ward.

So when you release a game on their favorite store (which remains Steam), outside of sending them free pizza (a free game they don't already have, works just as well), getting them to buy it elsewhere is the sort of thing that keeps marketing execs up at night.

That was the derision and resistance that we saw when EGS came out. And they were like "oh great! Now I have to install one more freaking app!?"

Then came the exclusives; which was met with even more derision and outcry.

Then came the free games.

Now, gamers who aren't likely to ever buy a game outside of Steam, unless they don't have a choice (see Origin et al), have an EGS account for the sole purpose of siphoning free games - while still complaining about EGS.

And they're still complaining about the inability to buy a game on Steam because it's exclusive to EGS.

Through all this they're forgetting that decisions to do exclusives, do partnership deals etc, is about money.

In the case of EGS, when you have a corp front-loading some of your dev costs, or even paying you for their ability to release your game for free, not doing such a deal is probably the dumbest thing you would do. Second only to suing a corp whose ToS you intentionally breached.

When the dust settles on all this, very little would have changed.

Steam will still lead - even as more publishers (see EA's latest move) increase their presence there; Epic will still be losing more money (exclusives & freebies cost a lot) on EGS in its bid to compete..

Short of govt action or a case that goes all the way to SCOTUS, Apple would have zero incentives to reduce its royalty rates, let alone relax their store rules allowing third-party payment systems; gamers will continue to be tribalistic...

And most of us will still be picking sides (for the record, I am on Team Gamer because I ain't stupid) publicly or privately (cowards!) while cuing the lols because let's face it we're all gamers - and we thrive on epic lols.

/end