Apple has blacklisted Fortnite from the App Store; are they digging a grave too deep or are they in full right to continue with their anticompetitive tactics?
The latest update regarding the ongoing lawsuit between Epic Games and Apple goes as follows: Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers has ruled in favour on nine of ten counts for Apple. Epic Games however got that last remaining ruling in their favour and it’s a pretty big one (however, still not big enough to validate the rule breaking stunt that Epic Games pulled against Apple on the 13th of August 2020).
Epics favoured ruling was that Apple is charged in relation to anti-steering provisions and cannot prevent developers from linking external payment & purchase methods, as they currently do, which is basically one of their many anticompetitive antics.
Judge Rogers has given Apple 90 days from the date of the ruling to cease this blockage of developers linking external methods, including methods such as notifying users of other storefronts or emails with various storefront options and collection of relevant information.
Basically this means that all of you iOS elitists won’t be playing Fortnite any time soon.
However, with all of this, Apple still got the majority of favour which included that they have the right to collect their cut of in-app fees (of which Apple take about a 30% cut of the charged fees) and one of the biggest ones is the declaration that the contract between themselves and Epic Games was completely valid and enforceable and Epic knowingly breached this contract.
Although Epic obviously appealed the ruling (they requested that the matter gets reviewed by a higher court judge), they did note that they were all for starting on a clean slate. A letter from Tim Sweeney (Epic CEO) to Phil Schiller (Apple Executive) stated that, as ordered by the court, Epic has paid over the $6 million, disabled the Epic payments from their severs and will be playing by Apples rules when they want to release anything onto Apple platforms.
What Sweeney asks in return is that their developer account be restored and Fortnites return to mobile hangs off of the decision of Apple, whether they’re willing to abide by the terms of allowing external payment/purchase links to level the playing field.
Apples’ response to this? A plain and simple “no”. Basically what it comes to is that until the lawsuit comes to somewhat of an end where the judge makes a final ruling and the case can no longer be appealed, Apple won’t even consider the reinstatement of Epics developer account. Sweeney indicates that this could take up to five years, so this is yet another prolonged antic of Apple keeping their anticompetitive ways.
Sweeney follows up on this reply on his Twitter account with:
“What “statements” are we talking about here? All Apple cites is a quote they fabricated, claiming I said Epic “wouldn’t trade an alternative payment system away to get Fortnite back on iOS.What did I actually say?
Thinking much more about whether we’re going to live in a world where two platform megacorps dictate software and world commerce to everyone or whether the digital world and the future metaverse will be a free world. Wouldn’t trade that away to get Fortnite back on iOS.”
If you would like to catch up with the entirety of Sweeney’s Tweets and keep on par with what’s happening, I’d suggest giving @TimSweeneyEpic a follow. He gives regular updates and so far seems to be keeping things pretty transparent. If you’re willing to drone through the 323-page court document on Apples Proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law that was filed on the 7th of April 2021, then feel free. It’s quite the read but interesting nonetheless if you want to keep up to scratch.
Despite what many of us might feel, whether it’s fair or not, Apple is huge and it seems that technically they are still in the right for the most part and it can cancel its agreements with Epic as well as any others “at any time and at Apple’s sole discretion.”
With all of that being said, Epic has always stood for the more fair side of things, allowing friendly competition and not doing us all in with ridiculous cuts out of pure greed. Okay yes, obviously they’re still a large corporation and they are taking a cut (a measly 12%) from developers – which just by the by, Microsoft is in full support of Epic and are reducing their take from developers to 12% as well – but compared to corporations like Apple and Google, that’s nothing.
Epic decided take the same actions against Google on the same day that they began with Apple, however Google stated that the legal situation regarding them is far different.
On the up side, companies such as Microsoft as mentioned above, Facebook, Spotify and Match Group are in full support of Epic Games in this monster of a lawsuit where Epic are sparing no cost at an estimated $593 million thrown into the case by the end of 2021.
This is a butt-load of money, no matter the size of your company, but Epic Games is currently holding the title of Fortnite being the most popular game in the world, meaning that they generate more money than you could imagine and they are more than capable of spending the estimated $593 million dollars for this case.
Regardless of whether they win (that would obviously be ideal) or lose majority (which is likely going to be the case at this rate), this is still kind of a long-term investment move they’re pulling here – Epic Games have an aim which coincides with the abovementioned point of them being on the more fair side of things. They’re aiming at creating what they call the “Metaverse ”. Inspired by the 1992 sci-fi novel by Neal Stephenson called Snow Crash, Epic Games wants to bridge the gap between the real and virtual worlds and they already have a small legion backing them on this.
All of this began when Epic Game introduced the Fortnite hotfix to bypass Apple’s payment methods and Apple didn’t hesitate to delist Fortnite from the App Store merely hours afterwards. Google did the same shortly after that on the Google Play Store.
In retaliation to all of this, again, merely hours after their delisting, Epic released a parody clip on the 1984 Apple advertisement which originally stood as – “The original concept was to show the fight for the control of computer technology as a struggle of the few against the many. Apple wanted the Mac to symbolize the idea of empowerment, with the ad showcasing the Mac as a tool for combating conformity and asserting originality.”