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Apple Failed to Comply With App Store Court Order, Epic Tells Judge

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Apple has failed to properly comply with a court order that requires non-App Store purchasing options be made available to third-party developers, Epic Games has told a judge (via Bloomberg).

iOS-App-Store-General-Feature-JoeBlue.jpg

The Supreme Court earlier this month declined to hear separate requests from both Apple and ‌Epic Games‌ in their three-year-long lawsuit against each other regarding App Store rules. As a result, Apple is able to continue to disallow third-party payment processing within apps, but it must allow developers to direct customers to a non-App Store purchasing option for digital goods.

Apple has since made changes to its U.S. App Store policies, and now allows apps to feature a single link to a developer website that leads to an in-app purchase alternative. However, Apple plans to continue to collect a 12 to 27 percent commission on content bought this way. The commission applies to transactions for digital goods and services that take place on a developers website within seven days after a user taps through an External Purchase Link to an external website.

Epic likely wishes to contest this aspect of the change in particular, as well as Apple's implementation of them. Epic Games‌ CEO Tim Sweeney on January 16 took to X (formerly Twitter) to criticize the‌ changes as soon as they were announced, and said that it would dispute Apple's "bad-faith compliance plan" in District Court.


According to Bloomberg, Epic said in a filing Tuesday that it "disputes Apple's compliance" with previously ordered changes and said it will explain the "non-compliance" in a forthcoming filing.

Meanwhile, Apple wants Epic Games to pay $73.4 million in legal fees after Apple won the antitrust case brought against it by the North Carolinian games maker. Apple bases the claim on Epic's original violation of its developer agreement, when its Fortnite game offered an in-app payment alternative on the ‌App Store‌. Epic previously accepted that it would owe damages if it lost its antitrust claims against Apple. Now that it has, Apple has issued the bill.

Article Link: Apple Failed to Comply With App Store Court Order, Epic Tells Judge
 
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https://www.macrumors.com/2024/01/31/apple-non-compliance-court-order-epic/
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contacos

contacos

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pmasters said:
Epic just wants a way to have Apple subsidize their software and delivery and keep all of the profits for themselves. They are pissed they could not cut Apple out of the profit loop.
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Why should Apple be allowed to charge Epic for transactions made outside of the Apple ecosystem? It's not like Apple allows them to just go and use a different store to sell their "goods"! Also, what are they (devs) paying the 99 bucks for? The whole thing is kind of ridiculous. Apple needs App Developers and App Developers need Apple. Both are nothing without each other.
 
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Timo_Existencia

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contacos said:
Why should Apple be allowed to charge Epic for transactions made outside of the Apple ecosystem? It's not like Apple allows them to just go and use a different store to sell their "goods"! Also, what are they (devs) paying the 99 bucks for? The whole thing is kind of ridiculous. Apple needs App Developers and App Developers need Apple. Both are nothing without each other.
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So you think Epic should be allowed to have their apps hosted on Apple servers, downloaded from Apple servers, available in the Apple App Store, using Apple API's and development tools...all for $99/year? Do you run a business?
 
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teagls

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Timo_Existencia said:
So you think Epic should be allowed to have their apps hosted on Apple servers, downloaded from Apple servers, available in the Apple App Store, using Apple API's and development tools...all for $99/year? Do you run a business?
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Hosting and downloading from Apple server's is dirt cheap... cost pennies. Apple's API and development tools... lol. You realize most of Epic's games are written in C++ with probably ObjC/Swift wrappers. Swift is an open source cross platform language. You could write a linux game in Swift using C++ under the hood on Nvidia GPUs without Apple whatsoever. You can build that using Visual Studio Code for free!! Apple has artificially put up a barrier to milk money from developers.
 
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contacos

contacos

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Timo_Existencia said:
So you think Epic should be allowed to have their apps hosted on Apple servers, downloaded from Apple servers, available in the Apple App Store, using Apple API's and development tools...all for $99/year? Do you run a business?
Click to expand...

I'd go as far as almost saying that Apple should give a share back to the developers every year to make the iOS platform what it is today. Imagining if Instagram, WhatsApp, Netflix etc. would band together and leave the platform
 
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wanha

wanha

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contacos said:
Why should Apple be allowed to charge Epic for transactions made outside of the Apple ecosystem? It's not like Apple allows them to just go and use a different store to sell their "goods"! Also, what are they (devs) paying the 99 bucks for? The whole thing is kind of ridiculous. Apple needs App Developers and App Developers need Apple. Both are nothing without each other.
Click to expand...

True, Apple is causing a LOT of bad faith with developers by trying to grab every last cent that goes through their platforms.

But it's also true that many developers (Epic and Spotify being the prominent examples) are also being greedy by essentially thinking they don't need to pay Apple anything for use of their platform and access to Apple's customers.

Finding a middle ground would go a long way here, but I don't have much faith of either side conceding any ground.
 
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wanha

wanha

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contacos said:
I'd go as far as almost saying that Apple should give a share back to the developers every year to make the iOS platform what it is today. Imagining if Instagram, WhatsApp, Netflix etc. would band together and leave the platform
Click to expand...

... and by doing so, they would walk away from the 500m (or whatever the number is) most profitable customers in the global market place
 
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Timo_Existencia

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contacos said:
I'd go as far as almost saying that Apple should give a share back to the developers every year to make the iOS platform what it is today. Imagining if Instagram, WhatsApp, Netflix etc. would band together and leave the platform
Click to expand...
"In 2022, Apple paid a total of 60 billion U.S. dollars to iOS app developers, roughly the same amount recorded the year prior. Cumulative Apple App Store developer earnings amounted to 320 billion U.S. dollars as of January 2023." Source
 
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