Like a lot of folks in tech and games I have been following the Epic and Apple trial closely

Like a lot of folks in tech and games I have been following the Epic and Apple trial closely.

For what it is worth here is my stance:

Apple should be able to charge whatever they want on their platform. It is theirs. That being said I do think that there is a price collusion claim that could be made that Apple, Google, Valve are all suspiciously holding at 30% despite all of the innovations over the last 10 years and the economies of scale. Clearly they are colluding and we are seeing a cartel-like pricing. Proof? There is no meaningful competitive pressure, or we would be seeing different platform pricing.

The remedy to this is simple to me: strike down the rules that forbid developers to offer lower prices direct on their own website or in-game or however. This goes to Walmart and Amazon with their heavy handed demands that they enjoy most favored nation status globally. That is clearly anti-competitive and not at all in the interest of promoting free competition, bluntly it is a reward the already winner mechanism that stifles innovation and slows down humanity's progress.

Charge what you want on your platform. But that is that, you cannot dictate commercial terms on other websites or linking in-game back to in-app purchases via another system.

It is that simple.

As it is now, Apple enjoys an 80% margin on 30% of the revenue or 24% of the gross revenue is their net profit. On a title by title basis they make no incremental capital investment, they take virtually zero investment risk, no development costs, no incremental marketing costs, etc. In short Apple makes more net profit off of each game than the developer/publisher does.

If we continue we will just further distort the economy into an oligarchy of 10 companies that siphon the bulk of the profits off of the other millions of "small and medium" enterprises who think they are companies, but instead are rather departments and divisions of these oligarchs that constantly have to find their own capital and pay their own payroll but can be dismissed at will by the oligarchs. What we have now is not free market capitalism.

Originally posted on Facebook on May 29, 2021.