Re: "Apple’s ironclad control of the iOS platform"
Bit of a strawman argument there.
I mean, by your reasoning, if you don't have a car, your portion of taxes shouldn't go towards maintaining the roads.
One thing this case has brought to light is that a flat fee of X% per dev is probably something that needs to be reexamined. (Remember, Google have a similar structure, as does Steam - and Epic on their own storefront.)
If I were to start developing apps for sale as a 1 man show and charge 0.99 currency per app/IAP, why should I only get .7 of it back per app if I "only" sell 100,000 apps/IAP in a year. (That figure, like all good stats is pulled directly from my ar$e... YMMV)
Contrast that with Epic or another big name like King. They sell way more than 100,000 apps/IAP per year. I'd wager that they sell an order of magnitude more than that a month.
I'll let the maths as an exercise for those interested.
Who's getting screwed more? Yeah, they're both getting 30% taken off the top, but if I expect to get 100,000 but instead 70,000 compared to Epic expecting 100,000,000 and getting 70,000,000. Who does it affect financially more? The large developer who has a diversified and stable platform or the lone dev who's on one platform starting out?
I'd said it before on one article and I'll say it again.
Epic only went after Apple for 2 reasons:
1. Visibilty (I's fashionable to dunk on and hate Apple)
2. The size of the playerbase on that platform is smaller than on Playstation, Windows and Android. It's less of a loss to them. Imagine what would happen if MS banned the Epic store app from Windows...
Not to take Apple's side on this, because the App Store model needs changes more than a newborn with diarhea, but Epic are doing this purely because they know if they make this noisey and even get it thrown out, they can strong arm Sony,. MS and Google.
If they win, they'll still strong arm them from a better position plus have money from Apple to do so.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
