Game Theory: The Secret Fortnite Agenda NO ONE Is Talking About!

what is this some kind of old black and white film lame you young whippersnappers it's obviously a parody of the famous 1984 apple commercial it's actually a clever stroke of irony because now apple instead of being the scrappy underdog like they were in the 1980s is now the big evil overlord that they were fighting against way back then oh it's true big tech has had near monopolistic control over the app ecosystem for nearly a decade but isn't that the reality of being in a multinational corporation in the internet age they need to make a viable business spanning various global markets requiring a tight control over the product not that much control why you're missing the point george orwell's novel 1984 is about manipulation of the masses by the government and big companies but here we see one company using propaganda to manipulate kids today am i right it's enough to make you proud [Music] hello internet welcome to game theory the channel that could talk about the increasingly complex laura fortnite but instead is opting to talk about the increasingly complex business of fortnite let me tell you right now no amount of lore analysis would touch how interesting and important what's going on right now is oh sure to 99.9 of people out there talking about our topic for today the hashtag free fortnight campaign in which epic games is going head-to-head with apple is just a battle for a video game company to make a bit more money off of v-bucks while another company is defending their terms of service but in reality there's something much much bigger at stake here so while most people think that the situation is epic breaking terms of service and then pulling a surprise pikachu in the get banned there's actually some three four and even five dimensional chess that's going on something that you all need to understand before you start retweeting hashtags because while the headlines are focusing on fortnite and that 30 apple tax or google tax on v bucks epic's lawsuit is actually about something much bigger bigger than fortnight you might ask oh yeah epic despite having what's arguably the biggest game on the planet right now still has their eyes on a bigger prize and no this isn't just speculation on my part this is me actually reading the 60 plus page legal document that epic filed against apple and google everything i'm about to tell you you can go and verify for yourself but i'm guessing that a lot of you don't want to wade through dozens of pages of legal documents so let me break it down for you and explain why if you think this is just about epic wanting to keep a bigger piece of the fortnite v bucks pie you are completely missing the point first a quick explanation so we're all on the same page for those who don't know basically any time you make a purchase in an app-based game like fortnite the payment gets processed either by apple or google depending on whether you own an iphone or an android in exchange for this service apple or google takes a hefty 30 fee which you know is pretty massive most other payment processors like visa or mastercard or paypal have what's known as a credit card fee those are usually around three to five percent that's why certain stores you go to especially smaller stores have credit card minimums for their purchases if you pay with a credit card for something small like a pack of gum the store can sometimes lose money on the purchase or it's just not worth the extra fee for that like one dollar total so apple and google are basically taking that except you know 10 times that amount for every emote and stolen dance move that you purchase in a game it's a pretty extreme ceo of epic games tim sweeney pointed out on twitter last month the problems with this sort of policy saying quote apple has gone crazy if colleges hold virtual classes through an iphone app apple could demand 30 of the tuition truly apple has no right to take any percent of any company's revenue just because they made the phone people use to access the stuff to get around this policy epic games the makers of fortnite decided to implement a new in-app purchase option for their in-game currency v-box instead of paying using apple or google you could provide your payment information directly to epic games in the process you sidestep around apple and google that allows epic to not have to pay the 30 apple tax and so epic offered to pass a 20 savings onto the customer keeping a little bit of extra profit for themselves so now that 10 v buck purchase 8 bucks provided you pay directly to epic rather than apple and as you can imagine apple wasn't too happy about getting cut out of the equation so they whipped out the old banhammer removing fortnite from the app store and to be fair it is a direct violation of apple's guidelines which state that quote if you want to unlock features or functionality within your app you must use in-app purchases apps may not use their own mechanisms to unlock content or functionality uh not so fun fact by the way and this is important if you're an apple user this apple tax is part of the reason things cost more when you buy them through ios systems youtube premium for instance costs more when you buy through the apple store because google is passing the cost onto you the user gee thanks a lot trillion dollar companies glad i could save you a couple extra bucks on your taxes that you don't even really pay anyway by the way the solution is to just buy from a different computer or operating system have the premium service attached to your account and then just log in on the device that you want it's gonna save you money each and every month who says that youtube videos about fortnite are wastes of time anyway fortnite gets banned and epic immediately turns around to produce not only the free fortnite event but also a 60-page lawsuit claiming that things like the apple app store represent an unfair monopoly stifling competition the fact that apple owns the device owns the store that sells the apps for that device and requires that purchases made through those apps go through apple's payment services is in epic's opinion a monopoly total control over the market and monopolies are against the law so therefore apple is wrong and needs to change its policy so that is the what of the situation on the face of it and this is pretty much all the discussion so far has been about but this is all just the surface level of what's really going on it's all a distraction from epic's true motivations in all of this so let's dig deeper into epic's actual strategy here because let's immediately recognize one thing epic knew that this was gonna happen they knew what apple was gonna do and they were ready getting banned from both apple and google stores wasn't an unexpected thing that they had to react to it was all part of the plan you don't just pull 60 plus page legal documents out of your butt they had that 1980 fortnight video prepped to drop days before we ever saw it online this was a very intentional move on their part they were locked and loaded so the big question is why start the fight is it really just all about v bucks spoiler alert no it's not and perhaps more importantly why are they choosing to strike now well the why of it is actually the most complex part so let's instead begin with why now because remember this isn't the first time that epics faced off against a tech giant for a period of about 18 days the only way to play fortnite on your android phone or tablet was by side loading the apk basically a way to run third party apps without going through the play store it wasn't until april of this year 2020 that you could finally download fortnite again through google play in fact while epic is filing this lawsuit now epic was actually claiming back in december of 2019 that google's 30 fee was illegal to quote them directly we have asked that google not enforce its publicly stated expectation that products distributed through google play use google's payment service for in-app purchase we believe this form of tying of a mandatory payment service with a 30 fee is illegal in the case of a distribution platform with over 50 market share in layman's terms you bought yourself the device square on the board you bought yourself the app store on the board and you bought yourself the payment service on the board you done got yourself a monopoly so epic has been beaten this drama of big tech r monopolies for a while now which makes the lawsuit against them the next logical step but why in 2020 well right now google and apple are looking a lot more vulnerable than they might have a year ago in may of 2019 the us supreme court upheld the ruling in the case of apple versus pepper basically the ruling of this case allows apple app buyers to sue the company for allegedly driving up their prices the claim basically says that by requiring apple users to buy app through its official app store and charging developers a 30 commission apple is adding a mandatory fee that developers then pass on to the customer remember that youtube premium up charge that i talked about a few minutes ago yeah you can sue apple to get that money back because of this ruling to quote from one of the supreme court judges a claim that a monopolistic retailer here apple has used the monopoly to overcharge consumers is a classic antitrust claim but apple asserts that the ios users in this case may not sue apple because they supposedly weren't direct purchasers we disagree and there's that key word again monopoly the court didn't necessarily say that it thought that apple was a monopoly but it didn't exactly not say it either and remember all of this is coming off those court hearings from several years ago where representatives from the big tech giants like apple and google and amazon and facebook were all called to testify before congress i know it's easy to forget because we were all busy with robot mark zuckerberg memes or old people or out of touch memes but all of those were anti-trust hearings looking to see if all of these companies are monopolies and require some sort of change in the industry epic's lawsuit also comes on the tales of another event from just a week before when microsoft announced that it was being forced to pull its x-cloud game streaming service off of ios x-cloud's goal was to let microsoft game pass subscribers play game pass games on any platform that they want and now well they can unless that platform is an iphone or an ipad apple blocked xcloud because it provided users with a way to play new games without those games being subjected to apple's own vetting and approval process which is odd considering that your iphone can run netflix a service that allows you streaming access to thousands of movies and tv shows that also aren't subject to being individually vetted and approved heck netflix even has streaming games like banner snatch and minecraft story mode so why does netflix get away with it when microsoft doesn't obviously i'm not the first one to call out this double standard microsoft themselves called out apple for their unfair discrimination quote apple stands alone as the only general purpose platform to deny consumers from cloud gaming and game subscription services like xbox game pass and it consistently treats gaming apps differently applying more lenient rules to non-gaming apps even when they include interactive content now why would apple do something like that certainly it wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that xcloud represents a competitor right when apple is making a big push for their own gaming subscription service apple arcade because that would be anti-competitive and monopolistic behave you're getting the point now huh if epic is playing 4d chess here in its efforts to take down these two massive tech giants they've spent a lot of time maneuvering all their chess pieces into place for it from the google stuff last year to the push against apple this year to the timing alongside apple vs pepper and while the timing of the thing with microsoft xcloud might have just been dumb luck certainly ain't hurting their case here's something that's definitely not luck in june of this year the eu began an anti-trust investigation into you guessed it apple centered on the topic of the app store and apple's monopoly on payments an investigation that they started specifically because of complaints from companies including spotify and oh yeah epic games so if you're google and especially apple right now you are sweating nervously because epic is attacking you on all sides all across the world trying to shatter your business which brings us to the really interesting part of all this epic's lawsuit why go to such extreme lengths to bring down apple and google is it really just to capture a few extra bucks off of every microtransaction cause even though that would be a substantial amount is it really worth going toe-to-toe with two of the world's biggest tech giants all of what we've discussed so far is based on events in the news and pr statements that allow us to speculate about why epic is suing but there's no need to speculate everything we need to know about the lawsuit is actually stated right there in the legal papers themselves so it's time to put on my scholarly glasses roll up my sleeves so as not to stain them with the fresh ink from the documents that just came off the printer looking at the apple lawsuit a lot of this stuff is what we already know um this case concerns apple's use of a series of anti-competitive restraints and monopolistic practices and all right i can already hear you dozing off so i'll just summarize they feel like apple has a monopoly over content on one billion ios devices we've already talked about that nothing surprising there this monopoly stifles competition hurts developers we have to pay an exorbitant tax and hurts consumers who quote are likewise denied choice and innovation in app distribution channels and are forced to pay higher prices and suffer inferior service from apple the unwelcome middleman whoo shots fired their epic inferior service unwelcome middleman tell us how you really feel there guys but past all of this blah blah blah of legalese there's actually one key paragraph that i think everyone's overlooking according to them if it weren't for apple's illegal restraints quote epic would provide a competing app store on ios devices which would allow ios users to download apps in an innovative curated store that would provide users the choice to use epics or another third party's in-app payment processing tool there it is my friends there is the rub well the headlines covering epic's complaint focus on fortnite and the fact that they want more of those sweet sweet microtransaction payments the much bigger claim and the much bigger dollars is coming from the fact that they want to launch their own competing app store and knowing epic's history it isn't that outlandish of a claim for epic to make after all they've already created the epic games store in their efforts to challenge steem who for over a decade dominated the pc games market without anyone even coming close to questioning their authority the epic game store isn't just there so epic can let people download fortnite without giving valve a cut of their sales epic sells games from other developers in that store and by the way epic thinking that the 30 tax on storeholders that apple google and yes steam charge is actually one place where they're willing to put their money where their mouth is epic's fee for their store is only 12 still seems higher than it needs to be considering that the credit card processing only takes about three to five percent but hey taking baby steps here it seems that in the same way that the epic game store was designed to compete with the monolith that is steam on pc epic wants to create the epic app store to compete directly with apple's app store on iphone and the google play store on android another two marketplaces that are completely uncontested right now in fact the idea of launching a competing app store for mobile phones isn't just a hypothetical it's something that they've already done if we look at the lawsuit that they filed against google we see on page nine that they got as far as striking a deal with oneplus currently the fifth largest smartphone maker in the us to get an epic games app pre-installed on all android phones but google forced oneplus to renege on the deal citing google's particular concern about epic having the ability to install and update mobile games while bypassing the google play store by the way this epic games app is very much a real thing that you can actually try right now on your android phone if you're the kind of person who's okay with downloading apks directly off the internet right now it only has itself two games fortnite and the gotcha title battle breakers but still it is a functional app store an app that you used to download and install other games including fortnite but also apps besides fortnite epics deal with oneplus which got killed by google wasn't to have fortnite installed on phones but to have the epic games app installed on phones an app that's effectively an app store that in success can take a big old chunk out of apple and google and you see that my friends is the big lesson here while fortnite might be one of the biggest games in the world right now epic has their eyes set on a much larger prize and they're playing a game that's a few years down the line in the same way that they wrote off the success of fortnite to launch the epic game store on pc which now serves as the first real competitor to steam it seems like they're now looking to ride the success of fortnite to create a similar digital storefront on mobile to serve as the first real competitors to both apple and google and while that might seem really smart well it is but they're also following a proven model here in 2004 the thing that valve was best known for was half-life but they used the popularity of half-life to get everyone to start using steam in order to play half-life 2 when it came out and now steam is a massive empire that far far eclipses the success of the half-life franchise while i'm sure epic does want to keep a larger portion of e-buck sales the fact that they took the approach of discounting v-bucks by 20 for all non-app store users seems to indicate that they're less concerned about the short-term profit of fortnight and are more concerned with building the next big mobile app store oh and uh by the way this is not the only brilliant move that epic is doing it's just the tip of the iceberg for these guys while everyone else here is playing four-dimensional chess epic is playing in like six dimensions and i don't think that many people see it coming it feels like epic is constantly getting brushed off as just being a company that makes fortnite and while fortnite is fun and all the business of epic is way more interesting i'd love to consider this video as the first chapter in a series where i expose the story behind the story and cover the parts of epic's game business that just aren't being discussed elsewhere so please let me know down in the comment section below if you enjoyed this video and if it's something that you'd be interested in i honestly think that epic is one of the smartest and most interesting companies in the world right now and i'm not just talking about video game companies but just companies period and if people are willing to tune in to hear me talk about it well i'd love to have the opportunity to break it all down for you so comment to let me know if that's something that you'd like to see in the future and also subscribe so that way you can know when the next part of that series comes out if and when it comes out and in the meantime remember it's all just a theory a game theory thanks for watching you

Channel: The Game Theorists

Views: 2,820,494

Rating: 4.9227738 out of 5

Keywords: fortnite, fortnite battle royale, fortnite update, fortnite lawsuit, fortnite apple, epic games, epic games apple, fortnite season 4, season 4 trailer, season 4 fortnite, fortnite season 4 trailer, fortnite trailer, fortnite chapter 2, fortnite marvel, fortnite apple trailer, fortnite chapter 2 season 2, fortnite fashion show, doomsday event fortnite, nexus war, fortnite nexus war, freefortnite, free fortnite, nineteen eighty fortnite, game theorists, game theory, matpat

Id: 8qZkl9CKgjI

Length: 18min 23sec (1103 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 29 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/JMObyx]

This video is legit fire, times are going to change, quickly!