So Apple versus Epic is in the news... and like two giant anime titans smashing through a pristine environment, I am captivated, and I cannot help but make some observations.

It's always amusing to see two titans of industry fight, especially when they've had to work together to get each other rich.  The original company behind Unreal Engine's juggernaut status and developer utility going to battle against the company that put the smartphone on the map and prides themselves on quality assurance and customer retention.  What an incredible lawsuit we've discovered! 

Full disclosure: I myself own an iPhone, and I own dozens of Epic's games like the Unreal series and a few Gears of War titles, even though I myself refuse steadfastly to utilize their proprietary third-party store.  Sure, I miss out on a few exclusives, and free PC games every now and then, but that's a small price to pay for my consumer ethics.  

It's unfortunate that we're likely to learn little about the inner workings of these two beasts' negotiations other than the hilarious amounts of money that Apple's storefront swallows from products like Fortnite, which generate billions due to their in-game cosmetics and season pass content model.

Everyone involved in the lawsuit, though, is making fantastic arguments that are sure to be fodder for the memelords to reproduce: 

Apple uses their Proprietary Third-Party Malware Defense: "fuck your third-party cesspool of a storefront!" 

Epic whines that they can't sell Fortnite cosmetics without going through Apple's payment system on an Apple device! "we really just want more money bruh"

Apple Counters with the "You Didn't Have to Buy an iPhone" counter-maneuver! "check out our competition, mofo"

Epic whips out their "Android vs iPhone" twitter-style argument! "apple has a billion user monopoly"

After all that... as the dust is settling and the closing debate begins... two weeks after the start of the trial... the judge just has to ask the question of Tim Sweeney: "What does Fortnite mean?"  Sweeney answers that the title is an allusion to the original mode of the game: the fort-building zombie survival mode.  

"So fort-related, as opposed to fortnight, two-week related?" The judge pondered.  "I had to ask... I figured I had you here, wasn’t going to have any other real opportunity to ask, so why not?"

The same day that this judge pondered this very question... my own father, the adorable baby boomer that he is, came to me and asked me, "What exactly is Fortnite, and why is it suing Apple?"  Pop loves himself some iPads, so he's been listening when Apple's name hits the newswire.  This one's for you, Dad, with all my love.

For anyone who missed this particular boat, Fortnite took the world by storm from 2017 onwards.  It had been developed since about 2011, and sold itself as an early-access beta like many games do, but with its formal release and subsequent transition to Free2Play, it was codified as a gaming institution and followed by millions of memes, memelords and content creators going viral off its success.

Fortnite aped its famous Battle Royale mode (mechanically pirated from the popular PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds), its OG zombie survival mode, and numerous other branded tie-ins with cosmetic items and special events over the years that you could acquire and engage with on your account if you acted within a specific designated timeframe; if you weren't around to score the goods, chances are, you probably wouldn't score them. 

This temporary, time-sensitive nature to the earning of cosmetics became enmeshed with the role-playing experience of watching a bar fill up to "get levels."  As one "leveled" their season pass, which costs about the same as a single month MMO subscription ($14.99), players acquire those cosmetic rewards, digital currency (Vbucks), and ways of getting the cosmetic items they were really after.  However, seasons are short-lived, and if you didn't play long or hard enough to get the reward you wanted, you won't get that reward.

Epic's business model changed and evolved with the markets.  Releasing free-to-play shooters with microtransactions for cosmetics has been commonplace for the past few years, and Epic have spearheaded this charge with Fortnite itself alongside games like Warframe.

But Epic didn't used to make microtransaction delivery platforms for children.  They used to make great games and great engines as often as bakeries baked bread, but that was long ago... before the dark times... before the smartphone.

You see, dear reader, Apple changed everything.  The mobile smartphone's increased ubiquity revealed within it an untapped gaming space: one already rife with Candy Crush clones that kept people absolutely glued.  Epic had always wanted a piece of this hot new action.  Their company famously shifts its focus with the tides of the market.  If you were in charge of Epic, I'm sure you'd try to keep them fabulously wealthy, too.

Fortnite's pretty much on every platform that can access the internet: your phones, your tablets, your PC's and consoles... however, recently, Apple removed Fortnite from its store.  Apple did this because Epic Games incentivized their players to bypass Apple's payment system and make the purchases third-party, skipping Apple's cut for hawking the game on their closed ecosystem app store.  Apple claims to have regretted the move, although they are suggesting that it's Epic's fault for starting this entire corporate catfight over a 30% revenue cut going to Apple's storefront.  

I can't blame either of these parties for doing anything here: they're all just jockeying over millions of dollars worth of 'mom's credit card' purchases!

This is more than just a case of boomer/millennial relives nostalgia for better times/games.  Outside of subscribing to an MMO, when Unreal Tournament first came out, you could do whatever you wanted within the toolset of the game: make levels, play matches, engage in all kinds of fun... and there was no chance of being asked to spend money inside the game. That practice wouldn't become industry standard until after the DLC and microtransaction invasion.

When the game is FREE, the additional incentive to purchase something is an insidious predator that will wait in the background, hoping to get the player emotionally invested enough to go ahead and actually invest.  Once they have the cool cosmetics and look like Thor from "the Avengers," now they're really hooked.  The experience bar and season pass driver to return to play more matches only further compounds the problem.

Fortnite is not a bad game, mechanically.  It's straightforward, simple to pick up and play (simple enough that most kids have a blast playing it) and the fact that it's free makes it easy to connect with your friends and play together in whatever manner you want: creative, competitive, etc.

Fortnite's true insidiousness comes not in the gameplay, but in the cosmetic dressing surrounding the gameplay.

Fortnite's not just a competitive or cooperative third-person shooter; Fortnite is a microtransaction-selling platform for corporate brands, artists, and anyone trying to promote a product to their audience of captive youths directly. 

Take, for example, the branded dance lawsuits filed against Fortnite by small, viral content creators who invented those moves: they wanted a piece of the action that Fortnite saw for selling their creative output for a few hundred v-bucks.  Most of them got what they wanted; however, that brings up the whole angle of an artists' ability to trademark their dance moves, a conversation which is neither here, nor there.  After those lawsuits, Fortnite directly partnered with multiple musical acts like Marshmello (cosmetic suit and dance moves seen above) and essentially directly licensed artists' aesthetics and appearances to hock their brand straight to fans within the game.  

Are you a Nike fan?  Get a pair of Nike's hottest shoes for your Fortnite avatar, complete with graphical logos to promote the product IRL.  Are you a concertgoer locked indoors during the pandemic?  No big deal!  XYZ famous artist is hosting a giant dance party and if you attend, you'll get some branded swag for your character!

The point is, whether it's branded clothing, Nike shoes, or viral dance moves, Fortnite is there to sell it to your kids so they can dab on their opponents in the game. 

Almost not even worth noting is the lootbox/gacha/skinnerbox factor: v-bucks and in-game currencies in these type of titles are often spent in great quantities to get the exact cosmetic item that players desire; however, mostly, they're used to open randomized gift packages rendered in beautiful artistic explosions of fireworks and dopamine.

Your kid isn't just buying digital shoes for their Fortnite avatar; they're buying randomized lottery tickets rendered as "llama piñatas" for the chance to get that pair of Nikes.  

Artists and brands being able to promote inside a closed ecosystem isn't necessarily a bad thing; for a company like Nike, it's only too easy!  What shoe corporation wouldn't love to be able to sell shoes without a shipping, manufacturing, storage and retail cost?  It's like printing free money because you have fans of your product; any company would be FOOLISH not to take advantage!

What makes Fortnite's branding particularly insidious is their reliance on childrens' access to their parents' credit cards.  In the world of mobile gaming, the ease at which transactions occur is a large part of why their properties are so profitable.  Microtransactions performed in this way (a kid racking up charges on an adults' credit card) are very often not refunded, due to the nature of cosmetic tying to user accounts.  It's a little bit like "you break it, you bought it" in a retail shop, only without the whole "opportunity to break the item" that comes from standing in a shop.  You actually bought the item before you broke it, sir.  You're gonna have to live with that purchase on your account, especially if your kid bought 500+ piñatas this month trying to get that sick costume, bruh!

Fortnite is hardly the first to take advantage of this phenomenon.  Like Candy Crush: Saga before it, Fortnite's revenue stream relies on whale spending to generate their sacks of money.  As Amazon Studios boss Matthew Ball wrote to VentureBeat in 2016, "To survive in the post-window era, the video industry needs to adapt to [the Candy Crush Saga] model... This doesn’t mean giving your core content away for free, but if a superfan wants to spend $100 or even $1,000 on your content, you need to find a way to let them do so." 

Fortnite's season-pass subscription fees also generate a large quantity of cash, but those season passes at least represent a role-playing kind of gamified way to earn cosmetics.  If you got the time to grind, you got the time to earn; but if you bought that pass, and you aren't playing, you are sure to feel its siren's call.

I am not a fan of this business model.  I grew up in the $40-$50 AAA-budgeted release era, when you spent the cash up front, got the game, and might spend an additional $20 or $30 on further content expansions should the development studio decide to release any.  Otherwise, my game spending ended at the website or the retail counter when I acquired the game.  The subscription MMO model is another animal entirely, but an MMO demands far more emotional investment than a simple competitive shooter like Fortnite should demand.  

I don't know where the industry is going to go from here.  It's in a very strange place. 

All I know is... I, personally, will not be downloading the Epic Games Store, playing Fortnite in any way, or paying Epic Games for v-bucks so that I can look like Iron Man or Marshmello while I compete in battle royale matches.

I'd rather buy more Bitcoin, instead.  At least, later on, I can do something with it.

Thank you for reading, and as always... stay curious, my friends.