It’s been a busy 24 hours in the Epic games HQ. It all started when they launched their new payment features on the iOS and Android apps. They implemented in the app two options of being able purchase V-Bucks (An in-game currency) you could either purchase the normal way via an In-App purchase or you can now use the “Epic Direct Payment” which is cheaper by 20%.
This is obviously a breach of Apples App Store policies. The policy states that if you want to unlock features or functionality in your app you must use Apples In-App purchase system. A couple of hours later the inevitable happened and Apple removed Fortnite from the App store.
The story doesn’t stop here though as in less than hour Epic games managed to get their 62 paged documents together to take Apple to court for removing their app. (Suspicious right?) Not just that in this time they managed to get a video together which is a video parody of Apples 1984. You can view it on a big screen in the Fortnite game as well as on YouTube Here: https://youtu.be/euiSHuaw6Q4
A few more hours passed and then Google decided to remove Fortnite from the Google play store. The difference between iOS and Android here is that you can have more then one App Store on Android for example there’s the Samsung App Store or there’s even an Epic Store made by the same people who make Fortnite. So on Android you could still install Fortnite. However Macrumours have reported that Epic are suing Google too. (I haven’t been able to find the papers for this one, Maybe Epic didn’t plan that)
I can understand why developers maybe annoyed with Apples policy’s and think that the 30% cut is quite steep. I think for Amatur developers or new developers maybe they should keep it at 20% for the first year then go to 30%.
However I also think this pretty poor behaviour from Epic here. They clearly knew that they were breaking Apples policy and I think they had every intention of getting their app removed so that they could play the victim card. If you think about how quick they had all the documents and fake adverts set up. They were ready for a battle.
Having read the message as well that is on their social media pages and blog posts I think its more poor behaviour from Epic as they’ve worded it as if Apple have been the bad guys the whole time when Epic have been the ones to break the rules. Personally I would rather use Apples secure and easier way of paying then via the Epic Direct payment system if I was a player.
Unsurprisingly Spotify have commented on the situation and support Epic games in what they are doing. I think it’s going to be a very interesting few months now as we see what is going to happen with these three companies. As I’m sure you already know Apple is already under a lot of hot water for the way their App Store is run and Epic in my opinion timed this deliberately because they knew Apple was being watched.
Thanks for reading
Kyle Wilkinson
You can read the papers logged against Apple here: https://cdn2.unrealengine.com/apple-complaint-734589783.pdf
Epic Games statement: https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/news/freefortnite
MacRumours post regarding Google being sued: https://www.macrumors.com/2020/08/13/google-pulls-fortnight/
Follow me on Twitter @kylewilkinson46
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