There’s a really interesting legal battle going on right now between two companies. We have Epic Games taking on Apple and it all started around Fornite, of all things. Fortnite is a moneymaker for Epic Games and anything else that seems to get attached to it. Fans worldwide are logging in daily to play this battle royale game and if you’re familiar with this title, you know that while it’s a free-to-play experience, there’s a means for Epic Games to turn a profit. That’s, of course, with microtransactions.
Most, if not all, free-to-play games typically come with a means for players to purchase in-game content. Fortnite was no stranger this and fans worldwide were throwing their hard-earned money to play the game with new cosmetics. However, when Epic Games found a way to work around having players purchase in-game content through the default means through the app which would cause a revenue split between Epic Games and Apple, the latter of the two companies was quick to shut things down on iOS.
Fortnite was removed and it resulted in a legal battle to see if companies like Apple are entitled to money for in-app purchases. This battle has also brought out some interesting aspects that are not necessarily between Epic Games and Apple. For instance, we learned how much money Epic spent to provide free video games through their Epic Games Store, the fact that Dead Island 2 is set to be an Epic Games Store PC exclusive, and now we have news that Walmart was working on a cloud gaming service.
This cloud service was brought up in a chain email with Epic Games co-founder Mark Rein. According to Mark, Walmart was able to present the service on both an Android smartphone and a normal work laptop computer. This setup was pretty smooth and played amazingly, but so far the service was put on hold because of the pandemic that we’re going through. There’s no word on if this will pop up anytime soon or what the business model will look like for consumers. For now, it looks like this generation of gaming is putting a bigger focus on making cloud gaming services a popular platform for players.
Source: The Verge
