Архив метки: Epic Games

Daily Crunch: Apple files countersuit against Epic

Apple strikes back at Epic Games, Android 11 is here and Microsoft announces a new stripped-down Xbox. This is your Daily Crunch for September 8, 2020.
The big story: Apple files countersuit against Epic
Apple has made the latest move in a legal battle against Epic Games, filing a lawsuit claiming that the company behind Fortnite is in breach of contract.

“Although Epic portrays itself as a modern corporate Robin Hood, in reality it is a multi-billion dollar enterprise that simply wants to pay nothing for the tremendous value it derives from the App Store,” Apple wrote in its suit.
This follows Epic’s attempt in August to avoid Apple’s 30% App Store fee, which led to Apple removing Fortnite and eventually Epic from the App Store. (Accounts tied to Epic’s Unreal game engine have not been removed.) Epic then launched a lawsuit and a PR campaign against Apple, arguing that the company is abusing its market power.
The tech giants
Android 11 has arrived — Android 11 isn’t a radical departure, but there are a number of interesting new user-facing updates that mostly center around messaging, privacy and giving you better control over all of your smart devices.
Microsoft confirms compact, $299 Xbox Series S arriving on November 10 — The Series S is essentially a stripped-down version of the upcoming Series X, without true 4K rendering and with a lot less processing power.
Apple’s next event is September 15 — The event will almost certainly feature the new Apple Watch.
Startups, funding and venture capital
General Motors takes $2 billion stake in electric truck startup Nikola — Through the deal, GM gets 11% ownership in startup Nikola, and will, in turn, produce Nikola’s wild fuel cell pickup truck by the end of 2022.
Silver Lake leads $500 million investment round in Indian online learning giant Byju’s — The round values the Indian online learning platform at $10.8 billion.
Progress snags software automation platform Chef for $220M — Progress, a Boston-area developer tool company, is boosting its offerings in a big way.
Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch
How to respond to a data breach — How a company responds to a data breach can make or break its reputation.
9 proptech investors talk co-living, home offices and other pandemic trends — TechCrunch surveyed nine firms that are writing checks today, and this second installment focuses on the opportunities and risks for startups.
JFrog’s IPO strong initial price range values it ahead of the larger Sumo Logic — The IPO wave continues to crest as a number of well-known technology companies line up to float their equity on American exchanges.
(Reminder: Extra Crunch is our subscription membership program, which aims to democratize information about startups. You can sign up here.)
Everything else
‘Mulan’ drove Disney+ app downloads up 68% week-over-week, but didn’t beat ‘Hamilton’ — According to early data, the launch helped grow Disney+ mobile installs by 68%, compared with one week prior.
Original Content podcast: ‘Teenage Bounty Hunters’ is more interested in relationships than bounty hunting — Despite the show’s silly name, we ended up surprisingly invested in the characters.
Drew Houston will talk about building a startup and digital transformation during COVID at TechCrunch Disrupt — This is next week!
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 3pm Pacific, you can subscribe here.

Daily Crunch: Apple files countersuit against Epic

Facebook pushes back against Apple’s App Store fees

Facebook joined the growing ranks of companies publicly complaining about the 30% fee that Apple collects on payments made through its App Store.
Those complaints came midway through a blog post about the social network’s new feature supporting paid online events. Facebook said that to support struggling businesses, it won’t be collecting any fees on those events, at least for the next year, which means that those businesses keep 100% of payments on the web and on Android.
But Facebook said that won’t be the case on iOS, due to App Store fees, and it took aim at Apple with surprisingly direct language (at least, direct for a corporate blog post):

We asked Apple to reduce its 30% App Store tax or allow us to offer Facebook Pay so we could absorb all costs for businesses struggling during COVID-19. Unfortunately, they dismissed both our requests and SMBs will only be paid 70% of their hard-earned revenue. Because this is complicated, as long as Facebook is waiving its fees, we will make all fees clear in our products.

iOS purchase flow on left, Android purchase flow on right. Image Credits: Facebook

To that end, the post includes screenshots of how the events payment flow will look on iOS and Android . On Android, it says, “Facebook doesn’t take a fee from this purchase,” while on iOS, it says, “Apple takes 30% of this purchase.”
Facebook said this language is included in the app update “which we submitted to Apple today for approval” — suggesting that there’s a possibility that the update won’t be approved.
This comes just about 24 hours after Fortnite was removed from the App Store, after Epic Games introduced direct payments into its hit title. It seemed like Epic was intentionally trying to provoke a fight, with the company quickly announcing a lawsuit against Apple and releasing a short in-game video parodying Apple’s famous 1984 commercial, with Apple cast as the villain. (The game publisher is in a similar battle with Google and Android.)
While Apple’s 30% fee has been around for as long as the App Store itself, the issue came to the forefront earlier this summer after Basecamp got into a public feud with the company over its subscription email app Hey, for which the developer tried to circumvent App Store fees by only accepting subscription payments on its website.
Apple’s Phil Schiller told us at the time that the controversy was not prompting the company to reconsider any of its rules, which he said were designed for a better app experience — to avoid situations where “you download the app and it doesn’t work.”

Epic Games launches a campaign (and lawsuit) against Apple

Facebook pushes back against Apple’s App Store fees