Apple, Epic, and the App Store
While I don&#x27;t like Apple&#x27;s 30% cut on multiplatform&#x2F;subscription products, I think Epic&#x27;s real motivation here is to run their own App Store, build a bigger moat and get the profits themselves (they take 12% cut, 5% if you use Unreal Engine, from developers in their store). They also make exclusive deals, bribing developers with funding&#x2F;marketing support, so that the games can only bought in their store for 6-12mo. Clearly they are not welcoming to competition themselves.<p>Buying games on PC now means that you have to install 5 different app stores which are usually slow, buggy and not that well written cross-platform code (pretty much like Fortnite itself).<p>Tencent is also 40% shareholder in Epic, and there has been criticism on Epic sending user data back to China.<p>&gt; In early December 2018, Epic Games announced that it would open a digital storefront to challenge Steam by using a 12% revenue split rather than Steam&#x27;s 30%.[20] Epic also said that it would not impose digital rights management (DRM) restrictions on games sold through its platform.[20] The store opened days later, on December 6, 2018, as part of the Game Awards, with a handful of games and a short list of upcoming titles.[21][22] The store was open for macOS and Windows platforms before expanding to Android and other platforms.[20] Epic aims to release a storefront for Android devices, bypassing the Google Play Store, where it will similarly only take a 12% cut compared to Google&#x27;s 30%. While Apple, Inc.&#x27;s monopoly on iOS currently makes it impossible for Epic to release an App Store there, analysts believe that if Google reacts to Epic&#x27;s App Store by reducing their cut, Apple will be pressured to follow suit.