... the developer on Thursday implemented its own in-app payment system that bypassed Apple’s standard 30 percent fee.
...1,000 V-bucks, which is roughly equivalent to $10 in-game Fortnite currency, now costs just $7.99 if you use Epic direct payment instead of the standard Apple payment processing. Normally, that amount of currency costs $9.99. Epic says, in this case, customers keep the extra savings, not the company. That cast the new arrangement as a pro-consumer move instead of a greedy power play.
My math skills aren't the best but it seems like epic is still pocketing almost an extra dollar there than previously (almost 10%), indicating that this is move motivated by financial gain (if not greed). Of course Apple stands out as the bigger case of "highway robbery".
I am somewhat curious on how much apple spends on maintaining the app store and how much of that %30 is net profit.
While it's probably not 10%, the transaction cost will come out of the transaction when processed by Epic. Normally that comes out of the 30% that Apple takes. Either way, the purchaser is saving $2 and the developer gets a larger share; this doesn't seem like a bad thing, especially when the developer is going to be spending a decent amount of cash fighting the App Store monopoly.
I mean, in theory third party payment processors still take a cut. I don't think it's a dollar on a 7 dollar payment. But it's also not marginal.
The credit card companies themselves charge 3.00%+0.10 at the reasonable maximum (or roughly $0.31). That is still not even counting the payment processor's fees (which pay the credit card company's fees for you).
I mean the "7 dollar price" is all artificial anyway, it doesn't really cost Epic anything to make the product of those 7 dollars (it's economic rent extracted from the intellectual property they maintain). Either way Epic is making more money on this move even if the whole extra dollar is fees.
I'd also guess that the Processor/CC Companies likely charge a bit more for this specific 'industry'; Processors and CC Companies often look at the products you are selling and what the overall risk is for things like chargebacks.
This is part of why a lot of mom & pop shops still have a 5 or 10 dollar minimum for card transactions; When I worked at a computer shop in an almost-sketchy neighborhood our minimum fee was Two whole dollars.
Given the frequency of refunds and the like, I'd assume Epic is probably not making much, if anything extra on top of this.
This may actually close a ban-hopping/stalling gap. I've seen people claim that if you do a refund for an App store purchase, the publisher may not even know about the refund for 2-3 months after it was requested/granted. This likely shortens Epic's time to react and ban people for requesting fraudulent refunds.
Even if they did pass the savings to the consumer completely, they would still likely make more money as more people buy it. This effect is much larger than the $1 they gain
...1,000 V-bucks, which is roughly equivalent to $10 in-game Fortnite currency, now costs just $7.99 if you use Epic direct payment instead of the standard Apple payment processing. Normally, that amount of currency costs $9.99. Epic says, in this case, customers keep the extra savings, not the company. That cast the new arrangement as a pro-consumer move instead of a greedy power play.
My math skills aren't the best but it seems like epic is still pocketing almost an extra dollar there than previously (almost 10%), indicating that this is move motivated by financial gain (if not greed). Of course Apple stands out as the bigger case of "highway robbery".
I am somewhat curious on how much apple spends on maintaining the app store and how much of that %30 is net profit.