Epic celebrates "the end of the Apple Tax" after court win in iOS payments case

> Speaking to reporters Thursday night, though, Epic founder and CEO Tim Sweeney said he believes those should be “super super minor fees,” on the order of “tens or hundreds of dollars” every time an iOS app update goes through Apple for review. That should be more than enough to compensate the employees reviewing the apps to make sure outside payment links are not scams

I would think making sure outside payment links aren’t scams will be more expensive than that because checking that once isn’t sufficient. Scammers will update the target of such links, so you can’t just check this at app submission time. You also will have to check from around the world, from different IP address ranges, outside California business hours, etc, because scammer are smart enough to use such info to decide whether to show their scammy page.

Also, even if it becomes ‘only’ hundreds of dollars, I guess only large companies will be able to afford providing an option for outside payments.

> I would think making sure outside payment links aren’t scams will be more expensive than that because checking that once isn’t sufficient.

According to the ruling on page 42, "(c) Apple should receive no commission for the security and privacy features it offers to external links, and its calculation of its necessary costs for external links should not include the cost associated with the security and privacy features it offers with its IAP"

> Apple should receive no commission for the security and privacy features it offers to external links

I'm not versed in legalese, so maybe I misunderstand. Isn't it reasonable that Apple receives money for a service they provide, that costs money to run?

A service to whom? Protecting users is a service to users, not to developers. This is a selling point of iPhone, and thus Apple receives money from users when they pay for the iPhone.

Think about it this way: totally free apps with no IAP get reviewed by Apple too, and there's no charge to the developer except the $99 Apple Developer Program membership fee, which Epic already pays too.