Epic Games Goes Against Apple and Google
The CEOs of Apple and Google along with others has been questioned about their authoritative practices earlier this month. In that, Tim Cook has been specifically asked about any oppressive policies regarding their Appstore, which could endanger or discriminate developers. While he assured they’d treat all employees equally, the restrictive payment policies by Apple has become a burden for developers. Under this, Apple crafted its policies to take a 30% cut of all the in-app purchases made by a user, which is also the same share for Google for developers in Playstore. Though this may seem fair for big developers, small ones often struggle to keep up with this. This becomes worse in Apple, as it doesn’t allow side-loading of iOS apps from third-party sites, like Android. Thus, to evade this, Epic Games has made a big move of skipping Apple’s standard payment policies through Appstore by creating an option for users to purchase V-bucks directly through Epic Games. Earlier, this method should go through Appstore, which automatically cuts 30% share of payments to Apple and sends rest to the developer. By this new move, the cost of 1,000 V-bucks will be reduced to $7.99 from earlier $9.99, saving more money for users. Apple called it an unfortunate step of Epic Games and would work with them to resolve and bring back the game on Appstore again. A similar statement was given by Google too, after delisting the app from Playstore. The game is still playable on phones for those who’ve downloaded, but the new users of iOS have no way to install it. Well, Android users can download the game from Epic Games website, where it makes its launcher to run the game.
