Topic: Fortnite Announces Price Drop On V-Bucks As Part Of New Mobile Strategy

[Shaymin]

Switch owners will benefit from the Last Man Standing match between Tims Sweeney and Cook.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/54596/fortnite-announces-price-drop-on-v-bucks-as-part-of-new-mobile-strategy

A billion dollar company is taking a swing at a trillion dollar company in a way that Switch Fortnite players will benefit from.

Epic have announced a "Mega Drop" on the Fortnite website that will see the price of V-Bucks (Fortnite's in game currency) and cosmetic items cut by 20% across the board, starting today. This applies to all platforms where Fortnite has launched, including mobile.

This sets up an interesting showdown between Epic Games and Apple, as Epic will be processing the payments on mobile through a method previously restricted to physical goods (such as making a purchase on Amazon using an iOS device). Apple's app store guidelines for iOS prohibit the sale of goods for a higher price on the app store in a fashion that passes the fees for using the store (traditionally 30%) on to consumers.

[RABicle]

This is actually huge. Apple have already kicked Fortnite off the app store and Epic had the barrel loaded to sue Apple. But now Google has gone and kicked them off too and Epic copy pasted the lawsuit to take on Google as well. Spotify have also thrown their support behind Epic and this all comes on the heels of Apple backing down in their dispute with Bootcamp over Hey. But not jsut that, Tim Apple, Larry Google and otehr CEOs all had some pointless bickering testifying to congress routine about Twitter shadow bans too and there's the fact that Tencent own 40% of Epic and a very loud man is trying to bad China and yeah wow.

I don't know where this will end up or the ins and outs of the of the lawsuit let alone all the otehr moving parts but this will take years to resolve. I think the days of platform holders taking a cut from in-app purchases are over, but if they can't make their digital storefronts profitable then those will either fall apart of something new will emerge to monetise us petty consumers.