“The app store is not a service. The app store is a bear service for developers,” said Epic CEO Tim Sweeney in his latest interview with Financial Times. In its endless battle against the so-called Apple App Store (and Google) monopoly, the owner of Fortnite tackles the Cupertino policy and calls Facebook an ally on the meta-verse.
Last year, after Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled that the App Store and its guidelines do not violate antitrust law in Epic Vs. The Apple case, Epics CEO Tim Sweeney was convicted of knowing more than the district court judge when he said she “made a mistake” in her decision.
Ever since then, Sweeney has tackled Apple App Store policies, especially when the company lacks to maintain the store as a safe place for users due to widely available scam apps.
In a comprehensive interview with Financial Timeshe talks about his Metaverse vision with Fortnite, Apple App Store policies and Meta’s vision of the metaverse, while calling it an ally – though he could sue the company over monopoly in the future.
Apple App Store as ‘a bear service’ according to Epic CEO
Yesterday, Apple released two independent studies showing that the iOS app economy now supports more than 2.2 million jobs in the U.S. and a 118% increase in U.S. small developer revenue over the past two years, which Epic chief calls a bear service for developers.
The App Store is not a service. The App Store is a bear service for developers. The app store forces developers to process their software in a sub-par way to give customers a sub-par experience to charge uncompetitive handling and processing fees to raise the price of digital goods. It’s a bizarre scheme that should never have been created … it should have been reversed as soon as the industry started to scale.
Tim Sweeney says that even though Apple has the right to make a profit on hardware – “as a company, they won reasonably in one market: hardware” – it can not do the same from software. Once again, he calls the 30% cut a monopoly, as PayPal charges 3% and Visa and Mastercard 2%.
The problem here is a classic monopoly tie. You start with hardware. Apple makes smartphones, and they make money on their smartphones – and they deserve it. But then they force all buyers of their smartphones to use their app store exclusively to provide digital content. They prevent all other app stores from competing with them on hardware owned by a billion end users. It’s the first draw, and it completely blocks all competition and market forces that would shape better app stores and better deals for consumers. And then the next draw is that Apple is forcing all apps in their app store to use their payment processing service for digital goods.
“Current monopolies will use their power to become the next monopolies,” says Epic CEO
Sweeney is “terribly afraid” of “the current monopolies will use their power to become the next monopolies on new generations of platforms.” But for some reason, even though Apple and Google seem bad, he says Meta has two sides.
On the metaverse side, Meta formulated “a really interesting vision.” and it is not “building a Meta-walled garden, they are trying to contribute to standards and practices that lead to an open metavers.”
On the other hand, Sweeney says that Meta controls the advertising economy and that the revenue share for the creators is very small. But since it does not pertain to Epic’s business, Sweeney does not call the company a monopoly once, as he states:
At present, Meta does not have a monopoly or even a significant user base in any core business where Epic competes or intends to compete. . . Meta does not do anything that suffocates us at all. You will have to wonder about the future. But overall, I am incredibly happy and impressed with the level of investment it is making in the development of a future hardware platform.
9to5Mac’s Take
Epic CEO’s vision shows why the district judge overturned his claims about the App Store monopoly, as Sweeney is not trying to stop Apple or Google, but to stop companies from cutting back on his profits with Fortnite and its metaverse future.
In it FT interview, it is possible to see that companies are Epics allies as long as they do not interfere in its leadership in a market. As a company, it is not at all wrong to become the leader of a segment or strive for the best in order to earn as much as possible, but after the recent years with the antitrust case Epic vs. Apple, it almost feels like the Epic CEO is shouting at a cloud every time others do not play for what he thinks is fair.
The full interview is worth reading; just click here.
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