Last spring in the early days of the pandemic, Jared Gay started a new kind of weekly ritual.

I would settle into my couch.

I'd pull up my iPad.

I'd FaceTime them.

Jared was working from his apartment in Brooklyn.

Like many of us, he was feeling extremely stir crazy.

And so he figured out a way to hang out with some friends in LA.

You know, we just be sitting there having a conversation while I'm playing Fortnite on

my iPad.

The wildly popular online video game where players land on an island, fight it out,

and the last one standing wins.

When you're playing a game like that consistently enough, it does start to actually feel kind

of appealing to like, you know, change up your look.

This is an important part of what we're going to talk about today.

Fortnite is free for anyone who has a console or software to download it.

So one way they make money is by selling outfits or skins as they're called.

You can play as Thor from Avengers or a giant banana wearing a suit named Agent Pealy.

There are a lot of these skins.

And you can buy other accessories, even dance moves called emotes.

Like Drake's Toosie Slide.

Unknown two players like Jared, because he was playing on an iPad, Apple would have taken

a 30% cut of any skin or emotes he purchased.

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