This is fascinating to watch, in summary:

1. Epic pushed an update to Fortnite which gave users a discount on V-Bucks if they paid Epic directly instead of using Apple payments.
2. We all know this is not allowed by the App store developer agreement, so Apple pulled Fortnite off the app store.
3. Epic, who knew this would happen, has immediately taken legal action to "end Apple’s anti-competitive restrictions on mobile device marketplaces"
4. And Epic is trying to rally their fans in this beef with Apple, using the #FreeFortnite hash tag and FAQ here: https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/news/freefortnite

Epic has released a short video, which is a spoof of an Apple ad from 1984. Here is the original:

And Epic's ad released today:

Yeah this is really interesting to watch. Seeing Epic just straight up call Apple out on their bullshit, I cannot wait to see who backs down first or if this is just something that becomes permanent. Like how many kids and teens and young adults who play Fortnite even know what that video is referencing? How many of them even know Apple made computers and not just the iPhone?

I've no real dog in this race between two multi-billion dollar companies, but I still think it's fascinating to see, to quote Patrick Klepek "Two giants, pissing in the wind"

I really hope the majority of the Fortnite audience don't get the reference.

Definitely did this with the intention of filing the lawsuit. I mean, it's cool and all but will they do this with microsoft and sony too?

Epic "seems" to be genuinely interested in creating a fair market for game developers, but if that's true then wouldn't they need to go at consoles too?

I'm also not sure what legal basis they could have, and I would assume this will be immediately thrown out

That 1984 ad...just, wooow.

I might just be horribly cynical, but I doubt this will result in any actual widespread change on Apple's part. The most likely outcome is nothing happens, after that, maybe an undisclosed settlement/agreement for Epic exclusively.

If this actually results in everyone being gouged less on the Apple store, awesome. But otherwise, I genuinely do not care if one of the largest game companies in the world makes 20% more money per micro-transaction.

If it's not thrown out, epic has the means to keep the lawsuit going for a long time and those are expensive. I could never see Apple not taking a cut, just like I'm sure sony, microsoft, nintendo etc, but I could see it resulting in maybe a 20% cut instead lol.

@oursin_360: For sure. Apple will take the cheapest course of action available to them, and Epic certainly has the resources to extend the lawsuit to make a cut more enticing. I'm just concerned the simplest solution for Apple will be to offer that 10% drop to Epic and Epic alone.

@theoracleofgame: it would be interesting if Epic takes that deal. If they get preferential treatment, paying apple less and getting back in the Apple store it would be a win but it would also mean that their rally call that would benefit all 3rd party devs would have just been talk and they were only ever interested in seeing the tide rise for them.

So who had "Legal Troubles" in the bingo chart for "Reason Apple holds on to so much money" - I had "Intends to purchase Ireland".

Epic will have to fight this fight with every ISP, Smart Tv manufacturer, App Store, Google Play Store, Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo. They don't own any of the roads they want to travel on so they have to play ball. All of our devices and storefront are locked into one ecosystem or another. They lose this fight. Apple won't miss them.

I don't see Apple being especially motivated to dispose of this quickly. They have infinite money for a legal fight, and it's not like kicking Fornite off iOS is going to have much impact on the overall bottom line. Cutting Epic a deal sets a precedent that will definitely come back to bite Apple.

@oursin_360: They can win in court and set a precedent.

@fourthline: not true at all. In fact fortnite has famously ignored the google play store for android, as well as ignored steam on pc. The thing is you literally can't ignore the App Store if you want to be available on Apple. ISP's and smart tv manufacturers aren't really a factor. Xbox and playstation don't force you to use their storefronts in the same way as Apple does, and I doubt they're really that concerned about nintendo.

Also I think you're underestimating just how big Fortnite really is. Epic's nuclear option (removing Fortnite from the App store totally SHOULD worry Apple.

I don't know anything about the legislation in the US, but the European Commission tends to come down pretty hard on most cases of monopoly abuse. Of course, you can't just file a suit with the EC but this might end up there at some point.

I'm of the mind that Epic gets a bad rep, mainly because people don't want to use the EGS, but it would be very fucking easy for them to use their position for evil and they kinda don't... People don't really trust their intentions and rightly point out that usually their 'solution' is actually the same problem only slightly less egregious. But I think it might be baby steps and they might be judged a bit too harshly.

And the other thing is Apple has a lot to lose if people stop looking up to them as a healthy premium brand. I'm not going to deny they make quality products (hell, I love my iPad and iPhone) but their brand and reputation is a huge factor in their success. People who look a bit closer of course already know that the App store's rates are extortionate, but looking a bit closer isn't what the general public does.

@clush: if you think there won’t be a fortnite app on 4K TVs by 2021 you might be out of touch with how fast technology movies. Everybody wants a cut of a cut of a cut. Games pass will be everywhere. If we had an E3 and weren’t in a console launch year we probably would have had the annoucement of game pass coming to your toaster. Epic wants to bully apple so they can bully the next guy too. You want to cross the bridge you pay the troll until you build your own bridge. They can probably do what stadia is doing in the next 18 months and be anywhere that will let them. They are just tired of playing ball at their current rates and want to justify their next move by saying power to the players blah blah. As if the rate for vbucks isnt fungible or they don’t control rates. This stuff kills me.

@warpr: Looks like you may want to update this Google just removed Fortnite from the Playstore too. Looks Like this is heating up to be one hell of a legal stand off.

@fourthline: sure, let’s bet. A Fortnite app for 4K tv’s by 2021, that isn’t just the mobile version running on AndroidTV.. yeah I’m the one out of touch.

As for the rest, I said what I said and am not really inclined to elaborate further until your take amounts to more than cherry-picking and whataboutisms.

@merxworx01: Damn, I wouldn't expect Google to join in helping Apple (even if it does help them uphold their own marketplace control). If it was Apple alone Epic would have a chance, but a market precedent is pretty hard to overturn right?

@clush: it’s not what about. If what is said about google pulling fortnite is true then clearly Apple and google do not care to negotiate their terms in any place other than a courtroom.

Who cares if it’s the mobile version or not. The point is epic is tired of playing ball so clearly they will come up with a solution to circumvent as many store as possible.

@theflamingo352: according to what I read Google also I interpreted Epics payment circumvention as a violation of it's terms and policies. So how knows how this will play out.

Android and Apple making up what I believe would be essentially the grand total of all mobile users and if we were to assume a large portion of its users on it are on mobile at this point operating in tandem, together they might have Epic by the balls.

Apple's policies suck, but Epic trying to mobilize players to help get them more money is hilarious. Do greedy fucks know no shame?

I wish this happened last week when Apple (and more) were in court over this very thing. Part of their defense was "hey, we're better than Ticketmaster".

Apples rules around forcing you to give them their cut, even though your company is 100% capable of handling the transaction itself, is ridiculous. Like yeah, a small dev who relies on the App Store and can't to deal with processing payments, that's what apples fees should be for. But someone like Epic, who is quite capable of handling the distribution and payment processing, should not be forced to give these companies 30% for forcing themselves in as the middleman.

Combined with their obtuse rules around signup, dragging their heels over Steam Remote Play, preemptively banning xCloud, fuck Apple.

This honestly seems like a similar situation to Blizzard where the company hits the jackpot on a single game (world of warcraft for blizzard) and over time starts to act insanely greedy (probably hedge fund managers got into positions of power at epic).

@spunkyhepanda: so freaking funny that epic is trying to get players to say "we want all the nickle and diming microtransactions to go to epic instead of apple". The players just feel like pawns in their giant corporation battle.

Eh, good for Epic

Not at all a fan of fortnite (loved me some UT though) and don't think they need even MORE fortnite cash but I view this the same way I viewed the push to lower store cuts and help out the devs who haven't sold a million or five copies or whatever Valve required to get on the lower cut tier. if Epic being big enough to make people care (and wealthy enough to afford legal fees) lead to smaller app store cuts then hell yeah.

ios and google have even less of an argument for "bandwidth is expensive" as they have MUCH smaller games and fewer cloud saves/different services for that. So 30% is pretty hefty for the privilege of selling in a closed garden.

i don't particularly care who wins this fight- i don't really play F2P games so i'm not incentivized to care how my hypothetical virtual currency is paid out. from my perspective it's two behemoths vying for dominance, just from different angles. i suppose you could argue indies have an opportunity to benefit from a lower-than-30% rate if Epic wins a ruling...but i'm not sure that's a guaranteed outcome.

that mock 1984 ad is pretty fucking ridiculous though. #freefortnite? get the fuck outta 'ere!

Apple was always a hipster Corp. (though I regret the term 'hipster' being used in it's modern sense) I do not know the issues, but any positive view on my part of say Epic, or Sony, or Microsoft tends to apply only to the moment.

And any of these companies really meaningfully saying anything about 1984 is near laughable. Though perhaps they are much more on solid ground than the present administration in the US.

So on iPhone is there no way to get apps other than the Apple-controlled app store? (forgive my ignorance)

At least on Android there are other options. IMHO that's sufficient (especially from the "anti-competitive" angle)...it doesn't seem problematic to me to require that in-app purchases flow through Apple / Google for an app sold through their store (not least because those would also be tied into parental controls, "restore purchases" features, etc.). I'd also imagine that complaints / requests for refunds go through the storefronts too. I'm unaware of what cut they take and I'm not against negotiating there (what Epic did here is not really negotiating, of course), though I can't quite bring myself to see this as a real issue for consumers...it's obvious Epic just wants more money.

If this action by Epic leads to a better deal for other developers then that's cool. I doubt they actually care about that but I'm past caring about the intentions of corporations if the results are good. But personally I think stuff like VBucks are a little gross especially seeing how much my younger cousins & their friends end up wasting on that stuff (cue "in my day..." spiel here).

This 100

2020 the year mega corps crumble?????

*chortles*

@quantris: I believe there are other ways to get apps but compared to downloading an .apk and going on with your day on Android it's much more involved and also much sketchier. Like 'pretend to be a developer and run the app as a 'test' app that you renew certification for every week with a private server' kind of sketchy.

Anyway it'll certainly be interesting to see this play out at the very least. Definitely don't ascribe any noble intentions to Epic at all, they just want more money, but if this brings about any widespread meaningful change in either of the app ecosystems then more power to them. That ad is ridiculously laughable though.

Hey kids, you wanna go fight for a giant corporation against another giant corporation?

Lol I don't really care for either of them but it's really skeevy to try and rally your player base against another company because of some legal battle like this.

man, Epic really did pick a very specific day to go apeshit on....pretty much everyone

Also god that fortnite 1984 thing is just...aggressively awful on about 70 different levels, but yeah I agree with the general "let them fight" sentiment.

They won't need to have this fight and they are already also taking Google to court for the same reasons. In their lawsuit documentation, Epic provide several examples of times OEMs like LG and OnePlus were stopped by Google from providing the game and microtransaction options that bypassed the Play Store.

Smart Tvs mostly all run on Android and if they don't and run on something like LGs own propitiatory OS, then there's nothing in the way of LG and Epic making a deal to have the game installed on every Smart Tv that rolls off the production line. If Google loses this case against Epic, then the Play Store that runs on Tvs and Phones will be the very same ruling.

And for Sony, MS and Nintendo, well they already won the fight against them, if you play Fortnite and have your Epic account linked, you can buy V-bucks on PC or Mobile from Epic. Those you can bring anywhere you want, even to your console. If you buy them on a console, they're tied to that console. So there's no monopoly problem there for Epic because they can just tell everyone, hey, buy your v-bucks directly from us and use them anywhere you like.

I know the 1984 thing was a parody of the that old Apple ad, but a mega Corp twisting Orwell’s work to rally up their player base to fight a mega Corp vs mega corp war repulses me.

This seems the opposite to me. If you're greedy you don't bite the hand that feeds you.

Tim Sweeney still has the controlling stake in Epic, so there are no hedge fund managers in positions of power.

IMO Apple is abusing their monopoly power, many companies have already spoken out about this, but many smaller developers who really depend on that App store income are not even talking about this because they fear retaliation by Apple.

To me it seems Epic is joining the few companies who have been vocal about this (e.g. Spotify and very recently Basecamp) exactly at the right time (while anti-trust investigations are ongoing in both US and Europe) with a big marketing splash, because they happen to be one of the companies who can afford to loose the money of not being in the app store -- they get enough money on PC and console.

EDIT: forgot to mention that Facebook had to make a bunch of changes to their gaming app to be allowed on the app store, and obviously Apple is not allowing Google Stadia or Microsoft xCloud apps. This fight is not just between Epic and Apple.

Interesting choice with 1984 considering Epic’s ties to a certain Orwellian dictatorship

@tp0p: I don't want to defend Epic, but do they nickle and dime their players? The multiplayer is free and the campaign is now $15. If someone wants to buy every skin that's on them. I would hate to be a parent and have my kid whining about a skin, but it is a free game. I like Smite and Paladins, but you usually have to buy skins out of a chest with them so it's gambling, at least you buy directly what you want with Fortnite.

I find it hilarious that EPIC think themselves as this saviour of games making that 1984 ad, when they're one of the most egregious nickle and dimers in the industry

@deathstriker: I totally understand that it's free to play. Just saying that that have 100 - 1000 dollar skins in the game for you to purchase(of course you dont have to buy them though).

@jesus_phish: Do you really think ALL smart phone manufacturer's that arent Apple hate having to use Android. There is IOS and Android, that's it. Every one of these companies is developing there own skin for the moment that it's determined that these companies are monopolies. Samsung will have one, LG will have one, etc. These companies are playing ball because they have to. But if android were declared a monopoly each cell phone manufacturer would migrate to their own ecosystem, tomorrow. Epic wants to expedite that process so they can engage on a case by case basis. Once they break up all the monopolies up so they can deliver directly to your samsung fridge.. then we will really see the consumer get bent over backward. I want both sides to lose.. somehow.

A good article today from Ars Technica summarizes what's going on.

An important takeaway from this article is that it isn't just Apple and Google charging 30%. Everyone charges 30%. All of the major consoles have the same 30% fee for microtransactions, and all of the console manufacturers make huge amounts of money for this. Also of note is that Epic hasn't gone after the console manufacturers over this, just Apple and Google. This is despite the consoles having similarly structured and restrictive app/game stores and having the exact same fee structures. Given that more than 70% of Fortnite players are on console, and thus likely a good chunk of microtransactions come from consoles, Epic probably doesn't want to poke that bear until they know they can win.

It feels weird to defend Apple and Google on this, but what Epic's going for here should they win essentially would entail Apple, Google, eventually the console makers, etc. being on the hook for hosting and providing updates for Fortnite but not getting paid for providing these services while Epic rakes in all the revenue from microtransactions.

@hnke: That wasn't a choice. It's a spoof of an Apple ad from 1984 as OP mentioned. Apple is the one that invoked 1984. They want to drive home the point that Apple has become the behemoth that it once railed against in the form of IBM. But worse and bigger!

You can say Epic's ties to Tencent makes it a hypocritical thing to clap back with their own 1984 ad, but that's up for debate and not part of the issue at hand.

Referring to this ad makes sense for Epic to do and gets the message through: Apple was upset about the dominant player in 1984, yet now they behave in a similar way.

I know a lot of people want to see Apple fail, but I think there's some serious ramifications if they were to somehow succeed from this.

I'm all for innovation and for new app-makers being successful. As a consumer though, I feel like the 30% cut that Apple takes doesn't effect me at all. What does effect me is the quality and security assurance of the apps that are available to download.

The whole point of having either the Apple store or the Google store is that you know you're getting a product that has been vetted and pre-approved. It means no risk in downloading. If just anybody could put an app for downloading, that starts to compromise the security of our phones which can have more personal information than our PCs do at this point.

I really don't see how Apple will react to this if they did somehow lose. I mean.. isn't their whole schtick beside brand name, privacy and security?

I feel like seeing that app-approval process being eliminated or toned down will lead to more chaos.

@whitestripes09:

Epic argues in the complaint that they already know how to handle this question with their MacOS. People that want to download approved software can do so, while those that want to make use of the power option to download from un-identified 3rd developers can do so too.

But they don't give this option in the mobile market? Why not? Because they are in a dominant position and don't have to offer that option, while they did have to offer this option in the competitive desktop-market.

Apple has asserted that blocking third-party app distribution platforms is necessary to enforce privacy and security safeguards.This is a pretext that Apple has used to foreclose all competition in the iOS App Distribution Market in which it has absolute monopoly power. A simple comparison to how Apple handles third-party software on its Mac personal computers illustrates how baseless its justifications are. Apple allows Mac users to access a number of different distribution channels to download software applications to their computers, including direct downloads from developer websites and the ability to purchase software applications from stores offered by third parties that compete with Apple’s App Store. The consumer experience of acquiring software on Apple personal computers and Apple’s smartphones is night and day. There is no legitimate reason why the same competitive structure for acquiring software on an Apple personal computer could not safely and securely exist on Apple’s smart mobile devices.

84.There are a variety of mechanisms available to ensure the security of third-party applications that are less restrictive than prohibiting anyone other than Apple from distributing apps. If Apple believes it has a unique capability to screen apps for privacy and security issues, it could market those capabilities to competing app distributors, for a price. But if given the opportunity, competitors may be able to provide even better privacy and security safeguards. It is for users and the market to decide which store offers the best safeguards and at what price, not for Apple.

This is basically where im at with Epic. I think what they are trying to do is probably fine, but the way they use there fans to shout at other companies to get what they want is super shitty. They accidentally turned on cross-play in Fortnite and have the players shout at Sony. They make there own game store and take less of a cut, telling people to yell at Valve. And now this crap with Apple. Epic can do there own thing and fight there own fights. But getting there player base to get in on the fight on top of that and act like there just doing it for the good and not the money is super shitty.

Big, dick-swinging corporate bastards, the lot of 'em.