Secret Business Practices in Gaming Industry!

Secret Business Practices in Gaming Industry Becomes Public during Apple vs. Epic Trial.

Some interesting information about business practices among the big guns of the gaming industry surfaces during the Apple vs. Epic anti-trust trial. As more and more documents and testimonies make their way to court, the secret business practices of Epic and Apple are now public.

Fortnite

It all began when Epic’s blockbuster hit Fortnite was kicked out of App Store by Apple for bypassing the mandatory 30% fee. Epic sued Apple over App Store payment restrictions and monopolistic business practices. Earlier this week the proceedings began in the federal court of the Northern District of California in Oakland.

Epic during the hearing brought forward statements of former Apple CEO Steve Jobs where Job’s intention was to “lock-in” consumers into Apple’s ecosystem. When Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney came for his testimony more interesting information turned up via documents. The document contained Epic’s details of giveaway practices in 2018 and 2019. One such piece of information was related to Borderlands 3 where Epic paid $146 million in advance to capture the game as Epic exclusive on PC. Moreover, Epic recovered $80 million for bundle deals, marketing and fee. This deal got Epic a whopping 1.56 million players, 50% of those were new on the store.

Gaming Industry and Gamers

As for Apple, it has locked in a massive number of wealthy gamers who are willing to pay more for games. Despite Android having the lion’s share in the global mobile market, but the spending on games is from Apple users. Since Fortnite’s launch on iOS, it has generated $631 million in revenue but on Android, the revenue generated is only $47 million.

An important aspect of the case is security, which company handles security better will give direction to the case. In one email, Daniel Vogel, Epic executive said, “Payment fraud is an existential threat to our store.” The email came out after 70% of Ubisoft’s Division 2 downloads on the Epic Games Store turned out fraudulent. Sweeney had to apologize to Ubisoft and had to temporarily halt all downloads of Ubisoft games.

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Monday was the first day of the three-week trial and it is just the beginning. Much more interesting stuff and information will make its way to the public in days to come. Stay with us.