Apple just kicked Fortnite off the App Store

To everyone that is supporting Apple's position, let me run this hypothetical by you:

You buy a Nespresso machine on Amazon. Some amount of the purchase price goes to Amazon for facilitating the transaction and delivering it to you, some goes to Nespresso for actually making the device. Cool. Then you get a pod subscription from Nespresso – let's say there is a touch screen on the coffee machine itself where you enter your details to subscribe. Now, Nespresso ships pods to your house every month. Amazon then says that because the machine was originally bought on Amazon, they are entitled to a 30% cut of that ongoing subscription price, even though the subscription is neither facilitated nor fulfilled by Amazon.

I think we can all agree that would be ridiculous.

That is what Apple is doing.

That is inaccurate. Your comparison would be closer if the purchase of pods was handled by Amazon

Any comparison with physically shipped goods isn't going to be particularly relevant here

Ok, so to make the analogy near perfect, we need to add in the detail that Amazon doesn't allow Nespresso machines with this touch screen + subscription service to be sold on Amazon at all if Nespresso doesn't use Amazon to process the payment. But that is exactly how Amazon would require a 30% cut for a service they have no hand in. I wouldn't be happy about Amazon saying you can't sell a Nespresso machine with that feature on Amazon. It would be a ridiculous thing to do.

Epic providing digital currency to their users costs Apple literally nothing. Apple does not participate in it. If Apple wants to charge Epic for whatever it costs them to distribute Fortnite to users (e.g. bandwidth costs) then power to them.

> Epic providing digital currency to their users costs Apple literally nothing

It's important to understand that this definitely isn't true. It probably doesn't cost them (anywhere near) 30%, but fraud, handling upset parents, providing a ubiquitous gift card system, etc etc. does have real operational and monetary cost. It's not just basic payment processing