Epic Games’s Mega-Popular Fortnite promises to return to the US Applications Store next week after a stunning decision in a year’s legal battle with Apple.
The controversy between Epic and Apple began in 2020, when Apple removed epic games from the iOS App Store. Because Apple gets 30% of all in -app markets, Epic had introduced support for direct payments to Fortnite to bypass Apple’s pay. The following year, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled that Apple was unable to prevent developers such as Epic to add links for customers to buy digital goods outside the iOS ecosystem to avoid crossing 30%.
But almost four years later, on Wednesday night, the same judge said in a decision that Apple was in a “voluntary violation” of the order that allowed developers to refer customers to payment methods not subject to Apple’s fees.
“That he believed that this court would tolerate such a non -existence was an inappropriate misconception. As always, the cover made it worse, for this court, there is no second bite in the apple,” Rogers said.
Even at the time of the 2021 decision, Fortnite did not return to the iOS App Store. At that time, epic Managing Director Tim Sweeney said The app would return when it could offer “in-application payment in fair competition with Apple in-App Paying, passing along consumer savings”.
But after Rogers’ unexpected decision this week, Sweeney said Fortnite would finally be available again for iOS users in the US.
“Apple’s 15-30% Junk fees are now just as dead here in the United States of America, as they are in Europe according to the Law on Digital Markets. Illegal here, illegal there,” Sweeney I wroteNoting that it took four years, four months and seventeen days to get to this point.
TechCrunch event
Berkeley, ca
|
June 5
Book now
However Sweeney is active Apple to expand US decision worldwide before bringing the Fortnite back to the App Store worldwide. This is something that Apple seems unlikely to do, as it plans to appeal to this decision.
