End user
Epic goes gloves off with Apple and Google
Everyone knows what Fortnite is, but in case you don’t, it’s a massively popular free-to-play battle royale with over 250 million registered users (as of April 2019) and a current concurrent player record of 12.3 million (as of April 2020). Creator Epic Games wasn’t doing too poorly before the game’s massive success – it operates the widely used Unreal game engine, among other things – but it’s fair to say that the partially Tencentowned company is sitting pretty right now.
As a result, it’s throwing its weight around. In August it attempted to defy Apple and Google’s 30 percent cut from Fortnite in-game transactions, by giving users the option to pay the usual way (via both App Store’s usual payment infrastructure) or with a direct payment to Epic. It was a matter of hours before Apple removed Fortnite from its shopfront. Google followed suit shortly after.
Epic shot back with a lawsuit, and an attempt to win Fortnite’s millions of players to its cause with an in-game video. But a week later Apple upped the ante: the company said that due to Epic’s violation of its License Agreement, it would terminate Epic’s developer accounts, as well as its access to Apple development tools. This is a much bigger deal than it immediately sounds, as it effectively means that any developer using Unreal Engine to develop games for iOS or Mac can no longer do so.
For once, Epic was driven to the defensive: it sought an injunction and filed a new lawsuit to attempt to quash Apple’s policy threat. At the time of writing, it’s unclear how this will unfold, but Epic is taking it very seriously: “This is quintessential irreparable harm,” the company’s lawsuit read.
Anyway, why should Epic fight the 30 percent cut collected by Apple (and Google)? It’s a good question with several answers. I daresay that Epic would simply love to have that money for itself, but that’s not the way it’s framing the battle. Epic CEO Tim Sweeney said it was about the “basic freedoms of all consumers and developers”.
“At the most basic level, we’re fighting for the freedom of people who bought smartphones to install apps from sources of their choosing, the freedom for creators of apps to distribute them as they choose, and the freedom of both groups to do business directly,” he wrote.
It’s a good point: Apple is worth trillions of dollars (which dwarves the mere billions of Epic). When Epic accuses Apple in its lawsuit of using monopolistic practices, it’s hard to argue: iOS is a vital platform for any smartphone software developer, and there is currently no way to operate software on it unless you’re pouring cash straight into Apple’s coffers. This is quite unlike, for example, the PC: Microsoft may appear keen to encourage Windows users to stick to the Microsoft Store, and to stick to Edge… but you don’t have to. To a lesser degree this is kind of the same for Google’s Android platform – indeed, Epic originally encouraged Android users to download Fortnite via a web browser, before finally caving in in April and launching a dedicated Android app.
Will Epic win? Its techniques have worked in the past: it encouraged Sony to begin dismantling its anti-crossplay policy on PS4 by just going ahead and activating it in Fortnite.
It knew that fan outcry would win the day. Will this prove the case in the Epic vs Apple debacle? One thing’s for sure: Epic is counting on its Fortnite userbase to agitate.