Loot Box #15: Nineteen Eighty-Fortnite
Dear friends,
Thank you for subscribing and sticking with Loot Box! Welcome to issue 15! I'm extremely grateful to those who reach out with kind words and give feedback! Keep them coming and please share with friends/colleagues who might be interested in reading. If you like what you are reading, please share and invite friends and colleagues to sign up. I appreciate it!
This will be the last issue of Loot Box in August. I’m planning to continue writing in a different format in September. I’m taking some time off to enjoy the last days of this strange summer. As a parting gift, I highly encourage you to read In Praise of Idleness by Bertrand Russell (from 1932).
All this is only preliminary. I want to say, in all seriousness, that a great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by the belief in the virtuousness of work, and that the road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organized diminution of work.
I also encourage you to stop scrolling through your feeds (at least for a few days) and switch off.
📈This Week in Numbers
30% - Apple and Google’s commission on in-app purchases
After promoting direct in-app payment and encouraging Fortnite’s mobile-app users to pay it directly, Fortnite got removed from the App Store and Play Store. Epic is not just bypassing Apple's in-app payment (i.e. iOS rules) but it's also telling users to do so to save money. After being banned by Apple (and later by Google). They also released #freefortnite video which is a parody of Apple’s 1984 Macintosh ad.
In their lawsuit against Apple, Epic is not seeking monetary compensation, instead, they are seeking injunctive relief to allow fair competition in these two key markets. They are also encouraging users to use their own payment method at lower prices which attacks Apple and Google by undermining their platform fees.
A few weeks ago when the U.S. antitrust subcommittee documents have been published, it was revealed that Apple got a special deal with Amazon to offer lower App Store fees. They agreed to take a 15% share of third-party Amazon Channels sold through the app if the subscriber used Apple payment processing.
As a predecessor to this contradiction with Apple, Epic launched the Epic Games Store in 2019 and charged developers just 12% to undercut Steam which charges 30%. As a side note, Apple doesn’t collect fees on purchases from non-entertainment / gaming applications like coffee bought from Starbucks or Uber / Lyft rides and Amazon shipments.
Just a few months ago, Fornite has crossed $1B in lifetime player spending on the App Store and Google Play and the epic Travis Scott concert had 12.3 million concurrent players and it’s estimated that Fornite has over 250M players (as of March 2019).
🍿Let’s see where this battle goes without forgetting this tweet from the man himself:
$3B - Wildlife Studios is worth $ 3 billion after new investment
The company has accumulated more than 2.6 billion downloads and has seen the user base of its main games, Tennis Clash, Zooba and Sniper 3D, grew between 30% and 50% in the last five months. Wildlife received a new $120 million investment round from the American fund Vulcan Capital and now it is valued at $3 billion.
Undisclosed - Embracer Group acquires 4A Games, DECA Games, New World Interactive, Palindrome Interactive, Pow Wow Entertainment, Rare Earth Games, Sola Media, and Vermila Studios
🍿Good Content
Apple goes to war with the gaming industry
Facebook Gaming Presents Understanding Audiences and Designing Better Mobile Games
New audience insights from Facebook IQ and game feature analysis from GameRefinery specifically focusing on Strategy, RPG , Puzzle and Hyper-Casual
As part of the “building in public” trend, I’ve been seeing companies sharing their Testflights publicly. This week I stumbled upon Eternal Plus which is an avatar-based Social Networking app targeted for Gen-Z. You can also join their Testflight through eternal.plus.
Have a great August - see you in September 👋🏻
Emre
Written by Emre Colakoglu, an experienced product manager and data scientist working in gaming based in London. You can find me on Twitter, my website and LinkedIn.
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