Accidentally Paying for Stadia – The TouchArcade Show #458

In this week’s episode of The TouchArcade Show we once again dig into the massive drama bomb going on between Epic Games and Apple. What side of the billionaire company fight are YOU on? We also get to a couple of reader emails and of course hit on all the major mobile gaming topics of the week, including the awesome Horizon Chase’s 5th anniversary celebration as well as the mind-boggling 99¢ deal (as of this writing) for the wonderful Diablo-like action RPG Titan Quest.

Don’t forget to shoot us emails with any questions, feedback, or anything else relevant or irrelevant to [email protected]. We read ’em all, and love decoding messages written entirely in emoji. As always, you can listen to us with the links below… And if you like what you hear, please subscribe and/or drop us a review in iTunes. Much appreciated!

As a companion to this audio podcast, we also do a video version of the same show that is exclusive to Patreon which allows you to see us playing the games we’re talking about. Backers can view the most recent video episodes of the TouchArcade show by clicking here. Be sure you’re logged in to see the latest content. For everyone else who is curious, you can check out our public patreon posts to see older episodes of the video podcast. If you like what you see, consider becoming a TouchArcade Patreon backer.

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Direct Link: TouchArcadeShow-458.mp3

Show Notes:

1 Comment

Ignoring for a moment if 30% is too much, what does Apple do?

They pay 1000s of developers to develop the APIs that are used to create iOS and iPad Apps. Also MacOS.
They develop and push out updates to their operating system yearly for free and the salaries, office space, tools for those employees do not come for free
They developer and distribute Xcode for free. Look how much some professional development tools cost.
They pay to develop their own language and optimize it for their platform.

By releasing their operating system for free, a majority of their users are on the most recent or very reason version making it easier for developers to support.

But offering their tools for free it opens to store to a lot of people who either wouldn't have had the means or interest to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for development tools like in the past. How many of those apps you use daily on your phone wouldn't have been developed if the cost of entry for the tools and entrance to the store was hundreds of dollars or more. This makes their ecosystem valuable and it's why Epic wants to be on the App Store and blackberry world.

I know their is their notification service they provide. Not sure what else, but there is more than just space for apps and credit payments.

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Lets say Epic wins and now applications can use their own payment processors. What happens when an app that has a subscription stops working? How do you cancel your subscription? Apple can't do it, third party processor. A lot of apps only exist on your phone now, there isn't a web site to manage it. What if your phone dies a horrible death involving a lake and you get an android phone. How do you manage your payments on all these third party payment processors in your apps? How do you cancel?

I'm not here to argue that 30% is right amount, but I feel Apple provides a pile of stuff without extra charges that make their App Store appealing. Allows it to have apps we wouldn't see otherwise. Epic is claiming their entire Unreal engine will be decimated if they can't be on iOS, but at the same time they are claiming they shouldn't have to pay Apple anything. Clearly Apple's share of the market means a lot to Epic, doesn't that give it value?

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As part of the legal documents that were released I believe it said that 12% of Fortnite's sales were through iOS. So if it was 5 billion, that's 600 million (12% of sales on iOS) and Apple taking 180 million of that.

Charles

August 26, 2020 at 11:16 am

Ignoring for a moment if 30% is too much, what does Apple do?
They pay 1000s of developers to develop the APIs that are used to create iOS and iPad Apps. Also MacOS.
They develop and push out updates to their operating system yearly for free and the salaries, office space, tools for those employees do not come for free
They developer and distribute Xcode for free. Look how much some professional development tools cost.
They pay to develop their own language and optimize it for their platform.
By releasing their operating system for free, a majority of their users are on the most recent or very reason version making it easier for developers to support.
But offering their tools for free it opens to store to a lot of people who either wouldn't have had the means or interest to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for development tools like in the past. How many of those apps you use daily on your phone wouldn't have been developed if the cost of entry for the tools and entrance to the store was hundreds of dollars or more. This makes their ecosystem valuable and it's why Epic wants to be on the App Store and blackberry world.
I know their is their notification service they provide. Not sure what else, but there is more than just space for apps and credit payments.
---
Lets say Epic wins and now applications can use their own payment processors. What happens when an app that has a subscription stops working? How do you cancel your subscription? Apple can't do it, third party processor. A lot of apps only exist on your phone now, there isn't a web site to manage it. What if your phone dies a horrible death involving a lake and you get an android phone. How do you manage your payments on all these third party payment processors in your apps? How do you cancel?
I'm not here to argue that 30% is right amount, but I feel Apple provides a pile of stuff without extra charges that make their App Store appealing. Allows it to have apps we wouldn't see otherwise. Epic is claiming their entire Unreal engine will be decimated if they can't be on iOS, but at the same time they are claiming they shouldn't have to pay Apple anything. Clearly Apple's share of the market means a lot to Epic, doesn't that give it value?
----
As part of the legal documents that were released I believe it said that 12% of Fortnite's sales were through iOS. So if it was 5 billion, that's 600 million (12% of sales on iOS) and Apple taking 180 million of that.

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