Elon Musk agrees with Epic, says App Store fees are a “global tax on the Internet”

With Epic and Apple seemingly far from settling their legal dispute, Tesla's CEO Elon Musk has come out siding with Epic, stating that Apple App Store fees are essentially a “global tax on the Internet”.

The dispute between Apple and Epic started almost a year ago when Apple removed Fortnite from the App Store due to Epic adding an alternative payment system to the game. Following Apple's removal of the game, Epic Games filed a lawsuit against the company.

Apple app store fees are a de facto global tax on the Internet. Epic is right.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 30, 2021

Until now, not many entities have sided with one party or the other, except for Microsoft. However, a new “contender” has joined this battle, Elon Musk. As per a recent tweet, Tesla's CEO doesn't agree with how Apple splits app and game revenue on their platform, claiming that  “Apple app store fees are a de facto global tax on the Internet”.

At the moment, there are still some stores taking the 30/70 approach, but things look to be changing. Besides the Epic Games Store, which takes a 12% revenue cut of sales, Google and Apple have also recently reduced their cut, with both reducing their revenue share to 15 percent for apps and games earning under $1 million in revenue each year. The upcoming Windows 11 App Store is also making changes to revenue splits for apps, although these new rules don't apply to games.

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KitGuru says: It's kind of ironic to see the tweet was posted using “Twitter for iPhone”, but that doesn't make Elon's opinion less valid. Do you think there will be other Internet figures voicing their support for Epic or Apple now that Elon has broken the ice?

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