Epic Explains Why It Hasn't Sued Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony Despite 30% Fee - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 02 January 2024 / 3,664 Views
Epic Games CFO Randy Gelber in a taped deposition heard during the Epic vs Google trial explained why they are not suing Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony despite having the same 30 percent fees as Apple and Google have on their mobile platforms.
Gelber stated the three console makers subsidize their hardware as they tend to be sold at a loss, so the fees are needed in order to cover those losses.
"We believe those [PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and Switch] to be competitive markets and we believe that the fee, their cost structure, is entirely different than a mobile app store," said Gelber (via The Verge).
He added, "Well, they subsidize hardware, so they sell their hardware, as far as I can tell from widely published reports, at a loss, and so the fee needs to cover that.
"Mobile apps are typically low in size and so their costs are higher, and I think their customer service costs are higher because people don’t call Google about apps, they call the developer generally."
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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And this has nothing to do with the precedent set when they lost the case and got their appeals rejected?
Seeing as how the lawsuit against just Apple led to Epic losing more money than they were bringing in and ultimately led to laying off 900 employees and currently in the middle of a lawsuit against Google, I imagine going against the big 3 would end up putting Epic out of business lol. Maybe that extreme, but I doubt they have the funds for that many major lawsuits.
Also Epic doesn't have a launcher for console to try and make a complain, partners with Sony (well even have Sony owning shares), and the negative margin of the console versus iphones is very different indeed.
Nevermind the ridiculous part where Sony, MS and Nintendo truly invest in gaming, makes games while Apple and Google basically parasitize the devs.
At the end of the day, by him saying that it is okay for Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft to go with 30% on consoles, but wrong for Apple/Google to do it with mobile OSes, he is making things worse for himself. Regardless of whether the consoles are sold at a loss or not (they are not, at least not since the PS4/Xbox One gen), he is sorta admitting that it is okay for each closed system/OS provider to set their royalty fees as they see fit. And that is exactly what Google Play Store and Apple's App Store are: closed systems, under absolutely no obligation to set lower fees. It is completely different than Windows, where Microsoft set a precedent of allowing all software on their OS. Neither Google nor Apple ever said they were going that route. Funny enough, if one or other DID lower their fee across the board, it would almost force the other to follow suite. Apps are generally iOS-developed first, but if Google did a full 90/10 split or something, that would certainly change. And after that, once Apple loses enough prestige from not having new, big apps come to iOS first, they would follow suit.
