Fortnite
Only recently did the protracted legal battle between Apple and Epic Games begin to move. The judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers had passed a first judgment and ordered Epic Games to pay six million dollars. This is about 30 percent of the sales that the developer studio had achieved with the help of a direct (actually not allowed) payment method in the iOS version of Fortnite.But with this ruling, the legal dispute is anything but settled, because Epic Games appealed a short time later. But that is exactly what prevents Fortnite from returning to the App Store anytime soon.
Epic boss Tim Sweeney has published a letter from Apple to Epic Games via Twitter. From these it emerges that there will only be an examination for the return of Fortnite (buy now 37.81 €) in the App Store when the judge's judgment can no longer be challenged and will therefore be final. In the worst case, something like this can take up to five years, which Sweeney heavily criticizes in his tweet. If Fortnite actually does not make a comeback in the App Store until 2026, that would logically be a heavy blow for Epic Games - especially in financial terms.
Recommended editorial content At this point you will find external content from [PLATTFORM]. To protect your personal data, external integrations are only displayed if you confirm this by clicking on "Load all external content": Load all external content I consent to external content being displayed to me. This means that personal data is transmitted to third-party platforms. Read more about our privacy policy . External content More on this in our data protection declaration. Apple assured that Epic Games would be very welcome again in the event of future compliance with the conditions, and Tim Sweeney promised compliance with the rules. But the last word does not seem to have been spoken in this case.
How do you feel about the subject? Should Apple allow the return of Fortnite in the App Store now or continue to drive a tough course? Write it in the comments!
Source: Twitter
Apple’s Indefinite ‘Fortnite’ Blacklisting Feels Personal, And Not Surprising
Fortnite
EpicEven though Epic squeaked out one win from the recent Apple trial ruling, forcing the developer to let games offer links to alternative payment methods, they overwhelmingly lost on all other counts that were meant to do things like force Apple to put Fortnite back on the store or prove that Apple was a monopolistic entity in the mobile space. Now, that has come with real consequences.
To paraphrase a common idiom, Epic messed around, now they’re finding out.
Epic’s plan in the wake of the decision was to resubmit Fortnite to the App Store under the new rules, offering a link to alternative payment methods, a variant of what got them thrown off the store in the first place. Apple had previously said that if Fortnite “played by the same rules as everyone else” they could be back on the store tomorrow.
Well, it seems they’re holding a grudge, which is no huge surprise. Apple has informed Epic that no, Fortnite cannot come back to the store, and it will not be allowed to until this entire court/lawsuit/appeals process is over with, which could be several years.
This news was revealed by an irate Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, in one of his traditional anti-Apple threads:
Apple says that statements made “since the trial” have contributed to them changing their mind, and Sweeney is guessing that it’s something like this tweet he made a couple weeks ago:
Sweeney’s crusade against Apple has always felt deeply personal, and even if you agree with him, his tactics, these tweet threads, the Fortnite “marketing” campaign against Apple with #FreeFortnite merch and even a game skin making fun of Apple as a greedy corporate overlord, has seemed somewhat misguided.
And the lawsuit itself carried a tremendous amount of risk. Epic clearly has designs on being one of the major contributors to the coming metaverse, a digital space where people hang out and interact and buy virtual things. Fortnite is further toward that end than most others, and yet they wanted to ensure that things were free and fair and not devoted to giving Apple 30% of everything that happens within a mobile portal to that metaverse. Instead, they have now found themselves blocked from a massive mobile ecosystem indefinitely, and there’s pretty much nothing they can do about it. In short, they lost. They lost the ability to expand their metaverse ambitions on iOS completely, and of course they have lost years and years and years of revenue from Fortnite and its microtransaction store being banned from the App Store for the indefinite future.
While many people may take issue with Apple’s handling of the marketplace, seeing this unfold the way it has is not exactly a surprise, given how personal Sweeney made this with Apple, and how naturally, they were going to do everything in their power to punish Epic for daring to bother them with all this, and to make them change anything about the store. As Sweeney says, this sort of does demonstrate the extreme power of their reach, and yet the counter-argument is, their store, their decision what to let on or kick off. And the court did not say that they had to let a game like Fortnite back on. So after all this, why would they?
It’s a messy situation and ultimately, this seems like it’s going to hurt Epic a lot more than Apple, barring any future appeals that may change the situation.
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