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Re:Epic direct payment on mobile by lifty on Thursday August 13, 2020 @11:38AM (#24144472)
I bet that Epic execs also talked behind the scene with other execs in the industry to garner support in case Apple cracks down hard on Epic and removes Fortnite from the app store. If more studios/developers join the cause, they can definitely apply big pressure on Apple.
Re:Epic direct payment on mobile by kingbirdy on Thursday August 13, 2020 @01:37PM (#24145922)
Fortnite is popular enough to count as "big pressure" all on its own. I couldn't find recent numbers, but as of 2018 they had over 100M installs and were doing over $1M/day in revenue[0] and by early 2019 they'd already done more than half a billion[1].

[0]: https://venturebeat.com/2018/07/30/fortnite-clears-100-milli...

[1]: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-02-08-fortnite-i...

Re:Epic direct payment on mobile by triangleman on Thursday August 13, 2020 @03:01PM (#24146953)
Weird, I thought Fortnite was free to play. What could people possibly be spending money on?

Edit: Also I thought Fortnite was a FPS. How can you play that on iOS?

Re:Epic direct payment on mobile by kbr on Thursday August 13, 2020 @03:04PM (#24146999)
They pioneered the "battle pass" model for cosmetic items, and their constant release of skins, dances, etc can create a lot of recurring revenue I imagine.
Re:Epic direct payment on mobile by triangleman on Thursday August 13, 2020 @03:11PM (#24147091)
Weird, on the one hand I'm thankful to hear it's not "pay to win" stuff, but on the other, wow that's a lot of skins and dances!

Edit: Insert joke about Quantitative Easing here

Re:Epic direct payment on mobile by kbr on Thursday August 13, 2020 @06:04PM (#24150057)
Yup, I think they definitely found the sweet spot for making revenue from games — offering players sweet returns if they keep playing (you buy the battle pass for 1000 vbucks, but you can earn back 1500 just from playing casually) while still keeping it relatively competitive and not "pay to win". They did host a $30 million world cup event after all :)
Re:Epic direct payment on mobile by uncoder0 on Thursday August 13, 2020 @11:53AM (#24144677)
Many mobile games are built on unreal. They could make this an option for developers to simply 'turn on' in their mobile games built on their engine.