As we reported a few months ago, esports have begun to go more mobile. With their rise in popularity comes high taxes on in-game purchases. Recently Epic Games, creator of the popular series Fortnite, and Valve Corporation have been fighting back against Apple’s App Store and Google Play.
They claim the taxes of as much as 15-30 percent are ridiculous, and the developers have actually been working around them. They would have users click a link inside the app itself to redirect their purchase to their website. Suffice it to say Apple and Google were not happy and blocked these efforts.
A report from the Toronto Star shares the following:
Valve’s Steam, the largest distributor of video games for PCs, planned to release a free iPhone app that let gamers keep playing while away from their computers. Apple blocked the app. Soon after, the tech giant updated its app review guidelines to ban anything that looks like an app store within an app or gives users the ability to ‘browse, select, or purchase software not already owned or licensed by the user,’ according to Reuters.
Should popular gaming apps be taxed higher because of their high popularity? It seems to be up for debate. Epic Games did in fact ditch Google’s Play Store. Fortnite has, to date, grossed a whopping $200 million since it launched on Apple’s App Store back in March. Sensor Tower, the company that tracks app purchases, said Apple stands to make about $135 million from Fortnite alone. Only time will tell if both app stores will cooperate more with developers and alleviate the taxes on them or if developers will ditch using them all together.
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