Gracing the Unreal Fest Seattle event with his presence, Sweeney, ever the champion of open platforms and the open metaverse, decided to turn up the heat on the major platforms, demanding more favourable terms for game developers.

His opening salvo is a “magnanimous” price cut for users of Unreal Engine 5, Epic's game development toolkit. For those who dare to release their games first or simultaneously on the Epic Games Store, the royalty rate will be slashed from a whopping five per cent to a mere 3.5 per cent.

In a moment of rare candour, Sweeney admitted that Epic is in a better financial position than it was a year ago when the company was forced to lay off a significant number of staff.

 Sweeney assures us that Epic has spent the last year rebuilding. One can only imagine the Herculean efforts involved in such a task.

"We're at a point now where game development is expensive. It's low margin, and game companies are suffering. Apple and Google make way more profit from most games than the developers make themselves while contributing nothing," Sweeney said.

Sweeney reminisced about programming on early Apple computers, ironically aligning with Steve Wozniak's vision for Apple, which saw users have complete freedom without corporate restrictions.  

He contrasted this with today's mobile platforms, accusing Apple and Google of acting as gatekeepers that stifle innovation.

"Among the fights we've taken on here, he noted the case with Apple is still an ongoing fight to open up payments so developers can process payments without Apple mediation and Apple fees," he said.