I'm a bit more pathetic to epic since they actually do push the industry forward. Apple have done f all for the gaming industry. In fact they've largely held it back for a long time by having such terrible support for graphics drivers.
IIRC, they even have a rewards thing right now where you can get some free stuff for playing their games specifically on mobile, trying to draw more attention to their new store.
I don't understand how Apple is getting away with charging other app stores. At most they could charge for hosting the either app store's app on their store, but that should be it. They have no other costs that they can justify since they aren't hosting, vetting, or curating the other store.
I think it's just that government bodies like the EU move slow so it'll take a while for them to bonk Apple, not that they're "getting away with it" in anything more than the short term.
Rare Good Guy Epic moment, here. That heavy breathing in the corner is the EU commission getting ready to send a sternly worded letter to Apple after investigating for 18 months.
To sell a game outside Apple’s App Store, developers must effectively pay a 50 euro cent per user per year installation fee once they reach a certain number of downloads. If developers want to link users to purchases outside the app, they’ll also need to fork out a 10 percent commission on all sales made “on any platform” — including outside of iOS. That’s on top of a 5 percent commission on purchases made within one year of the app’s installation. Then, they’d have to pay any fees charged by the operator of the new marketplace. In Epic’s case, that’s 12 percent — a significant discount on its own, but a major addition once you factor in Apple’s costs.
Checking Apple's fee calculator, apps that publish exclusively on third party stores don't have to pay Apple any commission, just the core technology fee. That makes it a bit less crazy, and I don't think article mentions it. Epic could save itself a lot of money by just not using the App Store but complaining is much more fun for Tim Sweeney.