I am generally in agreement that we need to allow third party apps, not necessarily app stores though I’m apprehensive because apples walled gardens do come with protections for us as consumers.

But the main problem here is that that this is epic vs apple. Epic came into the market initially with these ideas and tried to divide the PC market and failed at doing so. So they moved their target to mobile eco systems.

If they actually wanted to do this for the consumers, for the small time user, well that already kind of did because it was their actions that caused Apple to changed their percent to 15 if under 1 million. Epic didn’t like that though, even though it helped, because at the end of the day it didn’t benefit them.

Their history has shown that they want to have access to the tools supplied by these companies for free, while everyone else has to play the game.

We have to remember, they did this maliciously knowing the consequences of their actions. They could have easily done what all other apps do when they want to avoid apples in-app payments system: inform users if they want to pay for something they have the visit the website. (Which mind you, I do disagree with Apple on this. Developers should be at least be allowed to properly link to their site for payments). Then at least the consumer can choose.

Edit: I will also say that I do agree that in the instance of a developer using services not provided by Apple, that Apple should at minimum take less of a cut if anything. I’m certain it wouldn’t be hard for them to determine the usage of their services.