Apple VS Epic: The Reason for Their Lawsuit

As Apple announced in middle August, if Fortnite violates App Store policies, they will close their official account of Epic Games. Today, Apple reconfirms its previous announcement, and cancels Epic’s access rights to its account “Epic Games”.

Fortnite cannot be downloaded from App Store for weeks, while other games, such as Battle Breakers and Infinity Blade Stickers can still be downloaded from App Store. At present, Epic Games’ developer’s account was deactivated and all its Apps were removed from App Store.

At the moment, if you search “Epic Games” in App Store, the result will be blanked.

iPhone and iPad users who had already downloaded the game still can enjoy it, but there is one thing to be noticed—they are not able to enjoy the Season 4 Marvel skin, as they are not able to update the game any more.

Since August 13rd, Fortnite keeps violating App Store policies. It introduces a direct payment option in its game allowing users to pay directly to Epic Games, which bypasses Apple’s payment system. Apple kicked Fortnite off the App Store for breaking its rules, and Epic Games responded with a civil lawsuit against Apple.

Since the conflict of Epic and Apple began, Epic refused to remove its direct payment option in Fortnite. While Apple responded that if Fortnite kept its direct payment option, it would not appear in App Store any more. But if Epic removed it from its game and withdrawn the lawsuit, they were happy to see Fortnite coming back to iOS. However, Epic refused.

Last night, Epic sent an email to its Fortnite players, stating Apple unilaterally caused iOS users’ failure to enjoy the new contents. And accused Apple of antitrust behavior. In return, Apple started to promote Fortnite’s competing games PUBG.

At first, Apple meant to terminate the develop account of Epic Games and Epic International, and the latter is an independent account for third parties to use Epic’s visional engine. The court denied Apple’s requests. The court accepted that it’s reasonable that Apple removed Fortnite from App Store, as Epic did strategically plan to violated Apple’s rules, which was clearly stated in document.

According to Apple, the termination agreement is only applicable to the developer’s account of Epic Games. For those who violate App Store policies, they will be removed from App Store, which is the standard procedure as stated. Therefore, Apple essentially followed the court’s decision—App Store should deal with violations based on their user agreement. For Apple, Epic’s behavior is unfair on the other developers on App Store, and it won its competitive advantage through the back door. “We hope that we can cooperate with Epic Games in the future, but unfortunately not this time,” said Apple.