Epic Games vs Apple
In August 2020, Epic Games launched a silent update on Android and iOS for Fortnite. What this update did was that it added an Epic Games direct payment option that allowed players to buy V-Bucks (in-game currency for Fortnite) at a reduced price. So Apple and Google immediately removed Fortnite from their App Store and Play Store respectively. But it was a trap! Epic fired off a 60 page legal document and sued both tech giants. But why did Epic Games do this?
Hello, my name is Ayush and I am in Year 8 in North Halifax Grammar School in the UK. Recently I learnt about this situation in my IT lesson. I was quite interested in it so I further researched this fight and decided to write about it.
The reason that Epic Games willingly entered into this legal fight was because they weren’t happy with Apple and Google’s 30% cut. Basically, most companies take a 30% cut from the developers revenue when you buy something using their product. So for example, if I bought an app on Google’s Play Store, then 30% of that money goes to Google and the rest 70% goes to the developers. So what’s the problem? Well the developers sometimes go away with much less of that money and so Epic Games wants Apple and Google to reduce that cut. But they did not budge because when Epic Games agreed to the Terms and Conditions to be allowed into the App Store, they also agreed for the 30% cut. Epic also wanted something else too. To allow third-party apps. On Apple, third-party apps are not allowed to be installed which doesn’t give external developers a chance on iOS. Whereas, on Android Fortnite previously could only be installed from only the Epic Games website so they could avoid the 30% cut. But this lead to users requiring to do a long process to install the game while also getting scary malware warnings. So Epic was forced to let Fortnite be installed from the Google Play Store. Epic wanted two things, 1) the revenue cut drop and 2) the allowance of third-party apps.
Google remained silent throughout the entire thing. But Apple threatened Epic to ban the Unreal Engine (An engine to develop games) for breaking the Terms and Conditions. If Apple did that, all the third-party developers who just happened to use Epic’s Engine would have to suffer too.
Many might say that Epic doesn’t have law on it’s side but this is where Epic’s second attack comes in. Fortnite has built a society over the years which supports Epic at all times. The people want Fortnite to win. Microsoft sides with Fortnite and it reduced its 30% cut to 12 %. Facebook also supports Fortnite and it made an update on iOS devices and if it would have been published then it would bring huge public attention to Apple’s 30% cut, but this update was of course rejected by Apple(and was never published). Facebook said that according to Apple this update broke the guideline rules by showing “irrelevant” information. Apple did not respond to a request for comment.
Epic’s first strategy was to negotiate with Apple to reduce the cut, but of course they didn’t listen, hence the matter was taken to the court.
Who do you think will win and who do you think should win?
