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.

This looks like a great analogy, but it isn't. The app is still running on an Apple platform, with updates going through Apple infrastructure. It's a completely different situation.

Don't get me wrong, this statement isn't in support of Apple, I'm just saying that your analogy is bad.

The analogy holds. If I need a replacement part for my Nespresso (app updates) and I order that on Amazon, then Amazon gets their cut for facilitating and fulfilling the delivery of this replacement part. That's reasonable, because you are taking some portion of proceeds from a transaction that you have a hand in.

What is not reasonable is for Apple to take a cut from transactions that do not need to involve them. If Epic sells hats in their own online store and don't use Apple as the payment processor, this costs Apple nothing. No bandwidth costs, no nothing.

If Apple wants to charge Fortnite whatever it costs to distribute Fortnite updates on the App Store + 30% on top as their fee for delivering that service, I am 100% sure Epic would be OK with that.

This is not what they are doing.

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Here's an extreme hypothetical to illustrate how Apple is using their monopoly position for rent-seeking:

Imagine you have an app that is downloaded 100 times in the App Store. It is not marketed, advertised, other otherwise promoted by Apple.

In total, it costs Apple pennies to provide this service to your customers. You never push an update to the App Store – it is always on version 1.0.0. You are already paying Apple $99 per year for the privilege of your app being in their App Store, so they're pocketing a tidy profit.

Now imagine that you offer a subscription service, which all 100 customers who downloaded your app are paying for. This subscription costs $100 a month.

Apple is not involved in the delivery of this subscription at all (except in the delivery of the original app, which you are already paying $99py for), but Apple wants to take $30,000 a month from you, for something that in total cost them pennies.

If that's not ludicrous rent-seeking, I don't know what is. Obviously this is an extreme, totally made-up example, but the entire point is that it is bad to insert yourself into a transaction where you are not providing any added value – charge at the point where you are involved. Do not use your monopoly position to force yourself into transactions where you really have no business being.

I explicitly stated that I wasn't siding with Apple, because I expected exactly this response. Your analogy can be bad without you being wrong in your opinion.