It's not about Epic or any single company. It is really about consumers. Allowing multiple app store choices on mobile devices would lead to competition and really highlight the fact that 30% is far too much to be asking as a tax for the app store.
1) Amazon has been running there own app store successfully and that has worked out well enough for them that they continue to do so and a lot of Kindle Fire owners seem to enjoy that experience.
2) Few companies are Amazon though and the ability to operate 3rd party software outside of the purview of Google's own store is severely hamstrung for most others. This has also been called out by Epic Games previously.
Google puts software downloadable outside of Google Play at a disadvantage, through technical and business measures such as scary, repetitive security pop-ups for downloaded and updated software, restrictive manufacturer and carrier agreements and dealings, Google public relations characterizing third party software sources as malware, and new efforts such as Google Play Protect to outright block software obtained outside the Google Play store.
So even Google may eventually face legal issues regarding their anti-competitive app store practices. If big tech is forced to legitimately compete with other app stores, then continuing to charge a 30% fee will become untenable.
No, they haven't. Android usually permits software beyond the Google Play store but this is deliberately an obscure and deeply second-rate option. Android does what it can to steer users away.
- Blizzard games are exclusive to their store since forever
- EA's Origin has exclusives since they exist (or at least since 2011, not sure if that's from the beginning)
- Valve's games are Steam exclusives
Epic has time-exclusives, offering a very good deal to game makers, and is a quite good way to compete with Steam. If you're not happy with their store, just wait a year and you may buy the games you want on other platforms if the developers decide to do so.
Those are all examples of companies creating their own store so they can sell their products directly wihout paying someone else. This would be equivalent to Epic requiring to you to use their store to play Fortnite. I think that is shitty behavior but as you said, has become standard.
What Epic is doing, and the main reason they are being critisized, is approaching smaller developers and bribing them to not sell on other stores even if, in many cases, they had already promised their customers to sell on their stores. That is a wholly different level of scumbaggery.
There is no bribing here. They offer a better deal to developers than the competition is willing to do. And they have exclusives limited in time, the games aren’t blocked forever on their platform. That’s a good thing for developers, making and selling games is a bad business for a lot of people, Epic is offering very good terms, in exchange for a 6 months to 1 year exclusivity.
I personally see it as very good on the long term, that’s how you compete with a monopoly like Steam. That means more cash invested in making games, more options for developers, more options for users.
As an indie developer, entering into the Apple ecosystem really isn’t economically worth it considering the risk of total annihilation on top of the huge chunk of revenue you lose. An open ecosystem would change that calculus significantly.
