My Own Private Pocket Monopoly
The Bully Throwing Sandbox in Your Face
I’m honestly at not getting what’s going on with this whole Apple and Fortnite thing. I need your help. My daughter just downloaded Fortnite on her laptop and had to use it there to play with her fourth grade friend online, who is also locked in from the coronavirus. No iPad, laptop. She wants me to buy Fortnite bucks. Then I remembered: Can I still buy this digital currency? Why was Apple allowed to take a cut of Fortnite’s sales again?
When the announcement that Apple was taking down Fortnite, I had to stop and reflect on what was happening. Who did I want to give my money to? I’m not sure I got it right but here’s what I understand. Fortnite didn’t want to keep giving Apple 30 % of its sales when gamers bought coins or digital things on their app. So why was Apple skimming off the top? (OK, 30 percent is more like chunking off.)
Apple didn’t make Fortnite, they don’t deserve to steal from their success.
I looked at it this way. I got Amazon on the iPad and iPhone years ago now. That app is a storefront. Amazon sells stuff on that app and I’ve bought a lot of it over the years. But does Apple get 30% of every sale Amazon makes? I highly doubt it. So, Apple gets to dictate terms of what they can collect over someone’s app that’s not Amazon?
Why can I use my credit card on Fortnite like I do on Amazon’s App to buy things? Instead, Apple takes 30% of each sale of like 1–3% like Visa? And if I use my Visa, then it’s like two networks skimming off the top. At least Visa, though, is conducting a money transfer service. Where’s Apple’s value?
Why had Microsoft never done that when I was younger? 30 percent of every sale made when ordering on their PC desktops or laptops. They own the operating system. I bought stuff through their browser in the 12 years or so before I got my first iPhone.
But it’s not the operating system. It’s the special ‘sandbox’ of the App Store, I guess. I had thought Apple was using the sandbox to allow in only safe apps that would not damage the operating system. They sold apps, took their cut from the sale, and then they were out. Fair enough. But I had no idea they only let in apps that they viewed as potentially profitable to them, or at least give that appearance, demanding a cut from someone else’s storefront.
An app to me when it came out was like a specific web page. I opened the Amazon web page by clicking on the app and was simply browsing in all the web-pages Amazon had. I could buy what I wanted, or I could look. Whatever. The business was between me and Amazon.
So what if what I buy is digital or not? Some gold coins, a virtual outfit, a real outfit from Amazon. How is it any of Apple’s business? And I do mean business — Big Business. What I buy in a non-Apple storefront app someone else has created shouldn’t be given to the company, not a near monopoly (OK, duopoly since Google seems in on the deal).
I bought a productivity notebook app on the App Store. Does Apple take 30% of that sale? Maybe. I can understand the logic there. They are selling something as a store front themselves. But what is in the storefront is none of their business. Why not just let direct sales happen, like in the Amazon App, the Etsy App? It just doesn’t seem fair.
I do know that I am blocked by Apple from buying digital books on the Amazon App Store. Apple does get to dictate what Amazon sells, which again I find crazy. I have to open a special Amazon app for their ebook store, which is really just a bookmark that opens up in the Chrome browser (sorry Safari!). I buy my digital book there and then open up the Kindle Apple on the same iPad to read it. I can’t just buy the darn ebook in the Kindle app or on the Amazon App and instead have to play this stupid game. Thus it stands to reason that Apple is dictating how and what Amazon can sell on in its App Store?
Amazon, though, won’t sue Apple about this unfairness. They are too big and rich, and I suspect they have a relationship we don’t know about. Apple does have its own ebook App, which most likely does a fraction of Amazon Kindle ebook sales.
So why are digital items charged a thirty percent rate? Why does Fortnite, Roblox, or any other game maker, streaming music service, or digital book seller get the same treatment that Amazon does in selling things, stuff? Why are they punished for inventing a new business model or a successful one?
Let me know. Until them, I’m rooting for the underdog, and for Amazon’s ebooks. Sell us the app. Charge rent for the mall space. But stay out of other people’s sales. I’m sticking to this “my-storefront-view” until I hear the verdict or hear what you think. I imagine the verdict is years away.
