Apple Vs. Fortnight | Full Story

 Apple vs. Fortnite epic games the developers of Fortnite you're probably aware that there's a massive dispute ongoing, where not only has epic sued apple but, Apple has now removed Fortnite from the app store.

So I wanted to cover this topic for, so long now biggest battles between two tech companies so ghetto snacks ready sit back relax and enjoy.

Okay, so in case you've been following me

on twitter Adsense tech you probably know that I'm kinda on apple's side here, so for the sake of this blog being as unbiased as possible.

I'm going to split it into four different sections epic side apple side my thoughts and then finally, what's happening in the present day starting off with Great games are now one of the biggest game development companies in the entire world mostly thanks to their very popular game you know Fortnite.

But they were not always like that, whilst they were known for the very first three gears of war games epic games was mostly known for the unreal engine was not a game but rather a game engine that developers could use in order to develop their games easier and faster.

Now  I have used game engines before mostly unity, I have played around with unreal engine as well for a tiny bit but long story short unity was originally aimed at mobile games.

While the unreal engine was pretty much the most popular and the most advanced engine, if you wanted to build some aaa open world games for pc and console and developers have been using the unreal engine

since it came out in 2001 and games such

as The Tom Clancy series, The Batman Arkham series, Borderlands Fable The Mass Effect series, Medal Of Honor, all the recent Mortal Kombat games Darksiders and dozens of popular games and series were

all made using epic games unreal engine. 

But then in 2017 something happened epic games had this game called Fortnite in the works and at a time this was just a CO-OP RPG shooting game.

But after epic saw, how successful and popular PUBG's battle royale mode actually was they decided to add battle royale in Fortnite as well and release the game with saving the world, which was the original game mode as a beta game that was still in development, which you have to pay for and Fortnite battle royale was actually free. 

It was fully free to play the game and save the world was only released as a full game three years later in June 2020. 

Fun fact the battle royale mode in Fortnite was actually so easy to make and so simple that it took epic games just two months to build, whereas saving the world was a development for many years prior

to 2017. 

As you probably all know Fortnite battle royale ended up being a worldwide success and overtook PUBG quite fast the main reason for being so successful was that you could play it on literally any platform from PlayStation to Xbox to pc mac and even ios and android.

Fortnite was basically everywhere unfortunately it wasn't going that well for PUBG, who ended up even suing epic games for copying their battle royale idea. 

Even though it was actually Minecraft that first introduced The Battle Royale Genre thanks to a mod followed by an Arma 2 mod in daisy and fun fact the Japanese movie called Battle Royale from the year 2000 which was based on the 1999 novel

by caution, Takami was the very first to introduce the battle royal concept.

Yes this was even before the hunger games anyways, I hope that this gives you a bit more insight into epic games as a company

they're really more like a game engine company that then became massive thanks to Fortnite.

Now earlier this month epic games launched a silent update to Fortnite on ios. Where they purposely introduced a Direct Payment System meaning that users could pay epic games directly rather than the money going through an apple.

First, which would take 30 cuts now I'll cover why apple takes 30 cuts when I'm covering the apple side um but essentially epic games were not okay with apple taking

a 30 cut of their revenue so they wanted to avoid paying that, I mean it makes sense right 30 is quite significant now unfortunately avoiding 30 cuts was against apple's uh absolute policies.

So apple took down Fortnite uh until they fixed the issue quickly as apple did that

epic games had this massive lawsuit ready

and they sued apple and even released a full-on anti-apple

video and even a hashtag free four-night

PUBG is on app storefront page tournaments in you know four nights where you could get this pretty cool looking evil apple skin and they had all this ready on the spot.

So it was pretty clear that they've been preparing for this for quite some time now and intentionally wanted to get banned by apple in order for apple to decrease or even drop that 30 feet entirely and again that

makes a lot of sense Four knights made guess how much 1.8 billion dollars in 2019 alone billion not million in 2019 alone.

Which makes this the most successful game of 2019 and also one of the most successful games ever in history now epic games doesn't really share how many players they have on ios and all the other platforms.

But let's say if we estimate this as 10 of the total player base then apple would have taken 54 million dollars in commission and I'm pretty sure um ios and mac os and iPad os player base.

It is a little a bit of larger than just 10 percent this is why epic games want that committee to be decreased or even dropped they obviously want more profits like any other company.

But according to them, the users would   Plus benefit from the fact that the prices for this would be lowered when epic games introduced a direct payment method in  Fortnite.

The prices were two dollars less however epic was still charging one dollar more than the revenue that they were making after apple's cut so they were still making more money this way than by going.

The apple routes  sim Sweeney the CEO founder and also the shareholder of epic games  actually sends an email to Tim Cook Phil  Schiller  as well as Craig Federighi and Matt on  June the 30th telling them that epic is  unable to provide consumers with certain  features  in their ios apps and they requested  the following number one allow epic games to have a direct payment method,

without apple taking that thirty percent  cut  and number two allow epic games to  launch their own  epic games app store on ios to compete  with apple's own  app store now these were some really big  requests  but I do see where epic's coming from  they say that there are no other options  on ios for game developers  other than going through apple's system  apple's calling,

an apple a monopoly and they want others to be able to compete with apple's own app store on apple's own devices epic games stated that on android you can indeed load apps so you can have a separate store that competes with google's own play store.

Which epic games do actually have but on ios, you cannot have another store other than the app store well technically you can have Cydia but I'm let's leave that out yeah you have to yeah let's leave it out but yeah officially just the app store.

Now on August 13th, the day Fortnite launched a new direct  payment method, Tim Sweeney, the CEO of  epic games emailed apple  once again basically making them aware  that they will be launching this update  today  and if they do get their game blocked  they will be following the legal path  in getting this sorted there you go,

This is pretty much what epic wants this is their side of the story okay so what about  apple's side on this well apple doesn't  take a 30  commission but they do take this from  every single developer on the app store  not just  epic apple's argument is that they  created the iPhone they created ios and they also created  the app store  the world's very first global app store, 

On a mobile device and for that 30 cut apples giving developers number one exposure to literally billions of apple users number two hosting services on apple's app store and on apple servers number three tools to build their app such as Xcode number four a programming language that apple developed just for you. 

Know ios development swift the developers can use number five access to thousands of guides and tutorials and help number six wwc which is literally an event just for developers that hosts an entire week full of workshops and tutorials for developers.

So that they can use those to update their apps and get those ready in time for the big ios release the next version of ios and on top of that apple's also manually verifying every single app that goes into the app store for not just malware but also performance issues and UI design just to make sure that everything is consistent and high quality.

All across the board and for everything that apple does they feel like they do deserve that 30  percent cut it would not be fair for apple to have to fund the app store through let's say airport sales rather than you know directly through the app store's revenue.

Okay, now when it comes to epic's second request releasing a competing app store apple's argument is that they of course build the iPhone as well as ios in order to maintain the high quality and security that they praise themselves for they need this to be their whole system really the reason.

Why we only have apple's app store on ios okay so what are my thoughts on all of this so when it comes to that  30 commission epic games the first issue I'm sort of like in the middle here.

So I don't agree with epic where they basically want this fee removed as apple's clearly providing a  ton in return for that 30 commission but then at the same time  I don't agree with apple uh here either at 30 is true quite a large chunk you see when steve jobs introduced the app store back 2008 to the iPhone 3g.

This is what he had to say we keep 30  to pay for running the app store so initially, the 30 cuts were only there, so help apple run the servers.  But in 2008  apple was only worth 75 billion  dollars today apple is worth more than  two trillion dollars like that's an  astronomical growth in just 12 years thanks, Tim,

no, honestly that's literally Tim's doing now fun fact apple's entire app store in  2019 alone made over 50 billion dollars in revenue o in a single year that 30 commission that apple takes made money as the apple was worth entirely back in 2008 as a company when the app store was launched.

This apple needs that 50 billion dollars in revenue when they have two trillion dollars probably not however I'm not saying that Apple should drop the commission entirely as I still believe that they do deserve to charge some sort of commission from developers and like I said to you to know it wouldn't be fair for apple to keep or maintain the app store using the AirPods or something revenue.

You know that revenue needs to come ideally as a company using that service or using that fraction of the company if you know what I mean but I still think that 30 is too much I would say that 15 would be fair and anything lower than that that would be deeply appreciated and it would be you know beneficial to developers and to some extent to the consumers as well.

Now the thing is an apple isn't the only one to take a commission google is also taking a  commission the PlayStation store is also taking on the Xbox game store Samsung's galaxy store the Nintendo e-shop steam as well as physical stores such as GameStop amazon best buy Walmart and so many more they all take a commission if you want to sell your product through them and take a guess what percentage all these companies charge as a commission that's right.

It's 30  they all charge 30  probably because apple was you know the  first one to have like a digital store  uh as big as the app store and they had  30 it's probably because of that  um but yeah the idea here is that no  matter where you sell your product  you

have to pay a 30 commission there are only two exceptions to this so the first one being Microsoft Microsoft store on windows only so not on Xbox which has recently dropped the commission to only five percent and then the epic game store which is charging 12  other than that everyone else is charging 30.

So I do hope that apple drops this to 15  or  you know or so um as that way all the  other stores will likely follow suit and  drop the commission as well  in order to stay competitive fun fact  youtube actually takes a 45  commission which I think is just  gigantic  but I am happy to give youtube that big  of a share because without

 youtube I wouldn't even have that income home in  the first place  and it's the same thing with the  commission uh that these stores charge  without any of these stores you wouldn't  have any audience  and if you do your audience would be  just a fraction of what it could be  otherwise now

 something that I really  want to mention here regarding this  commission  is that there are a few stores that do  make some exceptions to a few  users which I think is really messed up  so Samsung's Galaxy app store  they actually do take a 30 commission  but you can actually cut a deal with  Samsung if you're big enough  and there are some reports that epic 

 games have actually struck a  zero percent commission deal with  Samsung which I think is  again really messed up considering that  you need to be pretty big to strike  that deal and speaking of that apparent apple  has also struck a deal with amazon where the apple was not taking the 30  commission on movies bought by users who  already

 had  an amazon prime membership so only new  prime members  would trigger apple's 30 commission so  yeah I think that these two cases are  really messed up  um I think no store should make any  exceptions whatsoever you know that's  the deal you can't make that's the rule  30 you can't make any special deals or  anything like that  now when it comes to epic games is 

 second request their own epic game store on ios I personally  don't agree with that at all it's  apple's own platform  why would they allow a competing store  They didn't even to mention the fact that on it  this will affect the quality and  security of the apps available  the PlayStation doesn't have an  alternative to the PlayStation store  the Xbox doesn't have an alternative to 

 Microsoft Xbox store either  so why should ios have one epic's  argument here is that you can indeed  install  a third-party store on android but you  cannot do it on ios  at all but even with this argument site  loading isn't something that the average  user  would be aware of and you know something  that the average user could

 actually do  epic already has  a game store on android but it wasn't  doing so well  and they decided to move to the play  store  but not before suing google.com as well in  order to avoid google's 30 cuts obviously that lawsuit didn't go  well  and they ended up staying on the play  store in the end and just  you know accepting that 30 cuts now

 one counter-argument to this would be we have the epic game store on mac os but why?  right we actually do have it on macOS  but not on ios and I think that's a  really good point  thank you well me I'm actually debating  myself here  mac os doesn't have as many limitations  as ios do, 

at the same time just look at the  quality of apps in the epic game store  or even steam for mac  versus the apps that we get in the app  store all the app store games they use the metal  they run very smooth they're also very  well optimized whereas  Fortnite on mac for example even if you  have a very

 powerful mac  that can play it really well on windows  on mac os on the exact same hardware it  has random freezes and many frame drops  that pretty much makes it unplayable  still apple made the entire platform  from the hardware to the software and if  they don't want to

 compromise on the  quality  and security of their app library I do  support that entirely  okay so now that I've covered both sides  plus my thoughts  what is the status of this as of right  now by the way if you are enjoying this  video and  if you want to see more in-depth tech  blogs like this one hopefully is then  uh definitely follow me, 

 you know it's free so shortly after  Fortnite got banned by apple  guess what google banned it as well  as Fortnite had implemented that direct  payment system  on the play store as well and google has  also removed it and epic games basically  had a lawsuit ready for google as well  just minutes after the ban so everything  was carefully planned  but they haven't targeted

 Google as much  as they did apple  mostly because they do have their own  third party store on android  only that it's far more difficult to  access than compared to google's own  play store apple then gave epic games a  deadline  until August 27 to release an update to  their game  to fix that direct payment issue or  apple would close  epic games developer account essentially 

 taking all of their games and products of the app store luckily epic doesn't have loads of games it's just Fortnite and infinity blade but I do have the unreal engine if you guys remember that from earlier in this video and what this band meant was that Apple was planning to revoke epic's unreal engine license on all of apple's products meaning that no developer could use the unreal engine at all.

So all of any third-party games that use a real engine that I've listed before and more they would be banned on any apple devices and developers would not be able to update or even develop new games using the unreal engine on apple hardware which I think is really really messed up.

So I was against this really against this from the moment I've heard about it third-party developers should not be affected by this whole apple versus epic dispute at all anyways apple and epic had a court hearing which obviously epic requested an emergency hearing and the judge basically ruled the unreal engine ban to be completely unfair as it was.

So they forbid apple from doing it but they did give apple the green light to keep Fortnite off their platform if Fortnite doesn't want to follow apple's rules and pay that 30 cut the lawsuit is still ongoing and looks like it might even take a few years to get it fully sorted yeah got a lot of lawsuits so in the meantime epic games released a few more anti-apple videos just mocking apple and trying to rally.

Their Fortnite community against them I personally think that's messed up and completely unprofessional so I'm not okay with mockery of any sorts in the meantime apple's keeping Fortnite blocked until epic updates the game so I think it's good that Apple is still leaving the door open for epic to return when they want to return now the game is still playable.

If you  have it installed but you would not be  able to  download it again if you do not have it  installed and if you open up the game  you'll notice that all the in-app  purchases are gone  the battle pass is also gone as well and  the game itself is stuck  to the pre-season 4 updates also app updates now started promoting.