> which means in-game item prices are artificially increased by up to 30% on _all platforms_.

Or means that Epic takes a 30% hit on revenue on the App Store and Google Play Store in exchange for the services provided.

Do you honestly believe that this is about Epic trying to lower prices for their users? It's not, it's about Epic getting all of the pie instead of just 70% of the pie. If Apple had caved before this stunt then prices would have stayed the same, but Epic would be taking it all themselves rather than having to pay Apple the 30% cut.

I am fine with epic getting a bigger piece of the pie, after all they are doing the work and apple is just taxing them. We are talking about 30% of hundreds of millions of dollars. The yearly developer fee Epic pays Apple should cover apples costs more than enough.

Apple and google already allow certain companies (uber, netflix,... ) to pay much less which by itself is anti-competitive.

You are missing the fact that epic is not a payment provider. So if they dont pay apple the 30%, they will have to pay stripe or adyen or any other psp. Most of those ask 0.25$ + 2% per transaction. For a fortnite skin of 0,99 or even whole apps that cost 0,99 that 30% is lower than the costs of other psp’s. And apple provides a lot more than just payments for that 30%. They handle disputes and refunds etc. and the handle all the money exchanges with sales is other countries etc

You're trying to argue that Apple IAP is a good deal for Epic, but Epic has clearly decided that it isn't.

but how is this different from, for example, me selling stuff on amazon? i want to access the amazon customer pool, so i pay amazon a fee to do it?

what would be apple alternatives that would not imply giving away services for free? i still have an hard time understanding this part: i understand that 30% cut i a lot i am not defending the 30% tax.

Amazon itself is in hot waters for antitrust, so perhaps you shouldn't use them as an example.

Still, there's a giant difference - Amazon's "customer pool" isn't forced to buy only on Amazon and Amazon doesn't force YOU to ONLY sell the same item to that "customer pool" (I like how you use a term that makes people seem like inanimate objects.) via Amazon.

This is a massive difference. All the benefits of free market (as opposed to command economy) are derived from customers being able to freely choose another vendor and product to purchase. Monopolized integrated services are just a corporate version of command economy where a single actor dictates pricing and eliminates competition leading to severe lack of innovation and worse products for everyone.

The $99/yr fee is supposed to cover apples costs for the store. Google asks for $25 and they have 6 times more devices to serve...

At this point the 30% is basically free money they get on someone elses hard work. And there is no consistency, some companies pay much less.

This is even more wrong in case of Spotify which is a direct competitor to apple music. Apple basically makes their competition 30% more expensive hence less competitive. (And you can by no means claim Spotify is big because of app store so the fee is fair, they exited before the first iPhone)