Epic Games CEO Blames Apple And Google Store For Unfair Competition

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has cleared his anger at Apple and Google’s store policies. He repeats his allegations that the companies deliberately created obstacles for competitors and thus also scourged their customers.

The statements from the new CNBC interview with Epic boss Tim Sweeney are basically not new – but they are increasing in sharpness. Sweeney is still fighting windmills, he explained now. His problem: He also wants to establish the Epic Games Store for Android and iOS users, i.e. bring his Windows and Mac games platform to smartphones and tablets. What he does not want is to give Apple and Google a 30 percent share of the revenue through the apps. However, individual negotiations about the share are excluded by both app store providers.

Apple and Google are not working fairly, Sweeney said, because Apple has an “absolute monopoly” on its app store, while Google’s control over Android “suffocates essentially competing stores”. The subject of competition and monopoly is the lever with which Sweeney now wants to crack Google and Apple. He is one of a number of tech CEOs who have campaigned against the companies for an antitrust investigation and who will be answering their questions to Congress in the coming weeks. Because of his criticism, the Epic boss is not alone. Several other developers have also opposed the guidelines over the years and publicly tried to boycott, but there have been hardly any changes so far.

Consumers pay for it

The Epic boss is also convinced that the current system of the two providers will not least harm customers. “If every developer could accept their own payments and avoid the ‘30% tax’ from Apple and Google, we could pass the savings on to all of our consumers and gamers would get a better deal on the items. And there would be economic competition. “

That’s how Epic does it himself

Epic itself had led the way with the Epic Games Store. Game manufacturers have an incentive to sell there – because they only pay a comparatively low fee of 12 percent from the sale to Epic. But Epic also does a lot of advertising for the games and attracts new users with weekly free games.