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The Courts Apple Games

Fortnite Remains Banned From Apple's App Store After Judge Refuses Epic's Request (bgr.com) 124

Epic Games "did not win its preliminary injunction in its antitrust action against Apple, which would have forced Apple to allow Fortnite back onto the iPhone, iPad, and Mac," reports BGR, calling it "the decision we warned you about a few weeks ago." Gonzalez Rogers hinted during the injunction relief hearing a few weeks ago that she wasn't inclined to side with Epic when it comes to Fortnite. She pointed out at the time that Epic lied in its business relationship with Apple. "You did something, you lied about it by omission, by not being forthcoming. That's the security issue. That's the security issue!" Gonzalez Rogers told Epic. "There are a lot of people in the public who consider you guys heroes for what you guys did, but it's still not honest...."

Epic engineered a huge PR stunt to turn gamers against Apple over the expected Fortnite ban and then sued Apple for anti-competitive practices at the same time. Even if the antitrust case might have merit on its own, this doesn't change the fact that Epic breached its contract... The judge clarified that Epic has breached a contract unilaterally and cannot claim that it did it because of monopoly concerns. Judge Rogers also said that Epic's failure to show it's willing to work with Apple and the court to have the game reinstated proves that Epic isn't necessarily concerned with the well-being of iOS users. "Epic Games cannot simply exclaim 'monopoly' to rewrite agreements giving itself unilateral benefit..."

Epic did receive some good news in the ruling. "Epic Games is grateful that Apple will continue to be barred from retaliating against Unreal Engine and our game development customers," the company said in a statement which was quoted by Thurrott.com. "We will continue developing for Apple's platforms and pursue all avenues to end Apple's anti-competitive behavior."

And the same site also quotes Apple's own statement on the ruling. "We are grateful that the Court recognized that Epic's actions were not in the best interests of its own customers and that any problems they may have encountered were of their own making when they breached their agreement."
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Fortnite Remains Banned From Apple's App Store After Judge Refuses Epic's Request

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  • by namgge ( 777284 ) on Sunday October 11, 2020 @07:11PM (#60596592)
    Apple believes that companies should "...act in the best interest of their customers." ? I don't think so...
    • by drnb ( 2434720 ) on Sunday October 11, 2020 @07:35PM (#60596654)

      Apple believes that companies should "...act in the best interest of their customers." ? I don't think so...

      It happened years ago at Apple. For example when they designed a secure boot process they could not backdoor or otherwise workaround if they wanted to. And then told the FBI, no, we are not going to abandon this design goal.

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Because they decided that privacy would be their new marketing angle. On the other hand they didn't seem to care much about their terrible keyboards, user-hostile OS, removing ports to force you to buy dongles and wireless battery powered headphones etc.

        • Because they decided that privacy would be their new marketing angle. On the other hand they didn't seem to care much about their terrible keyboards, user-hostile OS, removing ports to force you to buy dongles and wireless battery powered headphones etc.

          Nice irrelevant, off-topic, Anti-Apple rant.

          • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            GP said that Apple values the interests of its customers. I say Apple doesn't, unless they happen to be a marketing opportunity. Otherwise it's a walled garden, deliberate incompatibility, removing features and functions you want, and producing sub-standard products and then denying there is any problem.

            Completely on-topic.

        • Exactly. apple is a cancer in the tech industry.
  • by drnb ( 2434720 ) on Sunday October 11, 2020 @07:33PM (#60596640)

    Epic did receive some good news in the ruling. "Epic Games is grateful that Apple will continue to be barred from retaliating against Unreal Engine and our game development customers,"

    Isn't banning "Unreal Engine" a BS red herring? How is it good news that your false accusation will not be enforced. It was never at risk of being enforced as it wasn't real in the first place?

    Epic, through the loss of their developer account, would not get early access to new iOS and macOS APIs. They would have to wait for the public releases like everyone else. Oh, boo hoo. Irrelevant. Its not like Unreal Engine based games stopped working on the new iOS release. Such incompatibilities generally take many years to manifest, if at all. And even this is merely hypothetical as it is trivially worked around.

    Its trivially worked around by an employee with a personal developer account building and fixing code in Unreal Engine. They could add new features too. Including support for new capabilities of the new version of iOS or macOS, although committing such code to Epic's source code repository *might* have to wait until release day, as would commits to a public repository.

    • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Epic did receive some good news in the ruling. "Epic Games is grateful that Apple will continue to be barred from retaliating against Unreal Engine and our game development customers,"

      Isn't banning "Unreal Engine" a BS red herring? How is it good news that your false accusation will not be enforced. It was never at risk of being enforced as it wasn't real in the first place?

      No, it's a real threat. Apple would simply remove all apps using Unreal Engine from the App Store and not let developers submit apps us

      • by drnb ( 2434720 )

        Epic did receive some good news in the ruling. "Epic Games is grateful that Apple will continue to be barred from retaliating against Unreal Engine and our game development customers,"

        Isn't banning "Unreal Engine" a BS red herring? How is it good news that your false accusation will not be enforced. It was never at risk of being enforced as it wasn't real in the first place?

        No, it's a real threat. Apple would simply remove all apps using Unreal Engine from the App Store and not let developers submit apps using it.

        That is nonsense. There is no basis, no actual threat. Apple canceled Epic's developer account due to failure to comply with terms. That may complicate Unreal Engine development, causing it to wait for new APIs to become public. However there is no basis to removing apps with Unreal Engine binaries. Epic would have to do something monumentally stupid and unrelated to the current dispute, for example make undocumented API calls.

    • Isn't banning "Unreal Engine" a BS red herring? How is it good news that your false accusation will not be enforced. It was never at risk of being enforced as it wasn't real in the first place?

      No, it was real. Apple was pretty annoyed with Epic for cheating and trying to undermine the app review process. Therefore they decided to not just throw the offending app out, but to cancel any business they are doing with Epic.

      What then happened was Epic trying to get preliminary injunctions, and the result is that Fortnite is removed from the store until the court case finishes in May, and Epic can continue to develop Unreal engine until the court case finishes in May. After May, Fortnite might be rei

      • by drnb ( 2434720 )

        Isn't banning "Unreal Engine" a BS red herring? How is it good news that your false accusation will not be enforced. It was never at risk of being enforced as it wasn't real in the first place?

        No, it was real. Apple was pretty annoyed with Epic for cheating and trying to undermine the app review process. Therefore they decided to not just throw the offending app out, but to cancel any business they are doing with Epic.

        That is unrelated to third parties using Unreal Engine binaries. Epic had their developer license canceled. That is required to publish on the store and it is required to get early access to unreleased APIs and other developer info. A developer account is **not** required to develop third party libraries, which is what Unreal Engine is.

        What then happened was Epic trying to get preliminary injunctions, and the result is that Fortnite is removed from the store until the court case finishes in May, and Epic can continue to develop Unreal engine until the court case finishes in May. After May, Fortnite might be reinstated, or Unreal might be removed.

        No, Unreal Engine is not under threat of removal. It is a third party library. Fortnite was removed because the developer account it was sold under had been canceled. A third

    • Epic did receive some good news in the ruling. "Epic Games is grateful that Apple will continue to be barred from retaliating against Unreal Engine and our game development customers,"

      Isn't banning "Unreal Engine" a BS red herring? How is it good news that your false accusation will not be enforced. It was never at risk of being enforced as it wasn't real in the first place?

      Apple hat threatened to ban the separate account used by the subsidiary of Epic that develops the Unreal engine. Without a ruling by the judge there was a real risk that Apple would have shut it down.
      So a final decision on this is absolutely relevant and not a "red herring". It is important that Apples attempt to take a separate company and its product as well as all users of that product hostage has been denied.

      • by drnb ( 2434720 )

        Epic did receive some good news in the ruling. "Epic Games is grateful that Apple will continue to be barred from retaliating against Unreal Engine and our game development customers,"

        Isn't banning "Unreal Engine" a BS red herring? How is it good news that your false accusation will not be enforced. It was never at risk of being enforced as it wasn't real in the first place?

        Apple hat threatened to ban the separate account used by the subsidiary of Epic that develops the Unreal engine. Without a ruling by the judge there was a real risk that Apple would have shut it down. So a final decision on this is absolutely relevant and not a "red herring". It is important that Apples attempt to take a separate company and its product as well as all users of that product hostage has been denied.

        And if that **Epic owned** account were to be canceled it would do nothing more than inconvenience Unreal Engine development, in theory but not in practice. At worst Unreal Engine dev's would have to wait for a new iOS to be released and it API to therefore become public. In reality Unreal Engine devs could update Unreal Engine for any compatibility issue (which are unlikely) using their personal accounts and wait for iOS release day to commit changes to Epic's corporate version control system to build and

    • Isn't banning "Unreal Engine" a BS red herring?

      Yes it is. There are many games using that engine, and they are paying their 30% commission, so of course Apple is happy to keep them in the app store making them money. Epic was just handwaving and trying to raise the stakes in case a judge was ignorant enough to lump these things together and think they were in some way tightly coupled.

  • they can both DIAF (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bloodhawk ( 813939 ) on Sunday October 11, 2020 @07:35PM (#60596652)
    two piece of shit companies fighting it out. One can only hope they both lose, neither have any interest in helping or protecting the customer base, both are purely motivated by greed
  • Their claim is that Apple has a monopoly on their own platform. It might be similar to claiming that only by the allowance of the owners of a piece of land we can make money using a store on that land. They are just working to cut a better deal with apple and it is a no go. Don't waste your time, make good games instead (if you can)
    • Without looking at other analogies, it is pretty much the same as developing for game consoles.
  • by cjellibebi ( 645568 ) on Sunday October 11, 2020 @08:11PM (#60596744)

    ...instead of being distracted by this stunt.

    Unreal Engine 5 is just waiting for an FPS to show off it's capabilities.

  • I've conjectured for a while now that (is that the right word? Basically, theorized without proof.), with the massive wealth inequality, eventually the companies will have to turn to/on each other for further wealth as continuing to get it from the general population would be too inefficient. So when I hear stories like this and google suing amazon or oracle suing microsoft or whatever, all I can hear someone shouting "THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!!!" and the theme from Highlander playing. Hope that thought also b
  • Epic could surely not have imagined they would get legal backing for what happened, it seems pretty obvious. This is more like another soap box on which they can elevate their message and potentially get some public backing for the cause. I think they have succeeded in getting the message out there with regards the existing app store policies. The more we talk about this the more it will just seem silly that apple can insist on taking 30% of every in-app transaction. Or at least that's the long term plan.

    • Why is it only silly that Apple is doing this, vs Google, Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, Samsung...

      • Given the alternative rates that get charged for a payment processing service I think it's pretty silly across the board, but looks like Epic are only choosing to go after the mobile market for now. I guess that it's a proof of concept to get the conversation going and in the public awareness.

        • They are not paying for a "payment processing service". That's Epic's propaganda and you fell for it. They are paying for a whole lot of things, and amongst other things Apple decided how the cost of running the AppStore should be shared between the various developers: By making those who make the most revenue pay the most money. Which is completely within their rights.
      • Why is it only silly that Apple is doing this, vs Google, Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, Samsung...

        Epic is taking Google to court as well, it's just less published. As far as the others go, Epic makes less money from the AppStore than from other stores (I heard only 12% of their income), so worst case they lose 12% of their income, and winning would get them strong ammunition against the others. I have no idea how much they make elsewhere, but suing Sony or Nintendo might be a bigger financial risk.

  • by andymadigan ( 792996 ) <amadigan@@@gmail...com> on Sunday October 11, 2020 @10:31PM (#60597044)
    I switched from Android to iOS years ago. I won't consider switching back, mostly for security reasons, but also because of the App Store rules. Apple regulates apps so they can't do things like nag me to review them, or send marketing push notifications without a specific opt-out option. Every time I hear about marketers complaining that Apple's next privacy update will "kill" them, I'm happy.

    Epic has said they want alternative app stores on iOS, on Android they even made their own installer which had huge security problems. If alternative app stores did exist on iOS, developers would switch to them to avoid Apple's rules. There would be security problems, bad privacy practices, scams, etc, with no enforcement. Eventually, major apps like Facebook would switch to an alternative app store to avoid Apple's rules.

    Epic has specifically demonstrated their opposition to rules that I like. Their "Coalition for App Fairness" says "Every developer should always have the right to communicate directly with its users through its app for legitimate business purposes." This is obviously targeted at restrictions like requiring opt-outs for marketing push notifications and the system-wide setting to disable review nags.

    Apple's rules are a significant portion of the value I derive from their products. I hope Epic loses, badly.
    • by antdude ( 79039 )

      Um, apps still nag me to rate in my old iPhone 6+ (iOS v12.4.8). :(

      • by andymadigan ( 792996 ) <amadigan@@@gmail...com> on Monday October 12, 2020 @12:08AM (#60597256)
        The setting was added in iOS 10. As of iOS 14, it's Settings > App Store > "In-App Ratings & Review".

        They're enabled by default, prompts for ratings that bypass this setting violate the App Store rules. Enforcement isn't perfect, but the number of ratings request I get has dropped massively since the feature came out (and I never get prompted more than once), and you can always report violators.
        • by antdude ( 79039 )

          Hmm, I see these prompts once in a while but still annoying enough like in YouVersion's Bible app. Where do I report?

    • 100% agree.
    • by tlhIngan ( 30335 ) <slashdot&worf,net> on Monday October 12, 2020 @04:11AM (#60597694)

      It's interesting to note that when Epic was doing this experiment, 50% of users still chose the more expensive Apple payment option. They could've all chosen the cheap option, but in the end refused.

      Whether it's because they didn't want to give up their payment information to yet another company, or they don't trust Epic, it's seems hard to justify paying $2 more for the convenience of just buying the V-Bucks by using your fingerprint.

      Or maybe it's because Apple makes it easier to cut people off? I mean, if Epic decides to bill everyone monthly for they V-Bucks, it's a lot harder to get it back from Epic, whereas you can block it easily on Apple, or even just give Apple a call and have them reverse it. Or when you block it, you're just flipping a toggle on the screen and won't be sent through endless loops of Retention offers and impossible to click "Yes I want to cancel" links in black on black text. If Apple needed to do anything, they need to fix their settings dialog to make these things even more obvious to find.

      • Or maybe it's because Apple makes it easier to cut people off? I mean, if Epic decides to bill everyone monthly for they V-Bucks, it's a lot harder to get it back from Epic

        Not really. You just reverse the CC charge, and then Epic gets dinged, especially if a lot of people do it. This gives them incentive to be honest. But if you issue a chargeback against someone who is in charge of your access to lots of content or even your devices themselves, like Apple or Google (or even, say, Steam) then you risk losing access to all of those assets at least temporarily while they sort out whether they want you as a customer. That makes it a lot HARDER to get your money back from Apple,

    • Then don't install it. What you want or not want can't be used as an excuse to limit the freedom of others to install whatever they want on their phones.
      • If there&#226;&#8364;(TM)s an alternative App Store, inevitably I&#226;&#8364;(TM)ll be forced to use it for at least one app (Kindle and Uber both spring to mind). Since Apple is all about privacy, the alternative App Store will probably differentiate itself by sucking up as much personal info as it can and handing it to developers. I&#226;&#8364;(TM)d guess other &#226;&#8364;oefeatures&#226;&#8364; from Android will also show up, like apps that generate pop-up ads
    • by ezdiy ( 2717051 )
      This is the allure of the walled garden (or protection racket) in general - and why the average user is increasingly seeking em out. Walled garden *has to* make sure the experience is convenient, the editorial service is *the* service they provide and you ultimately pay taxes for. It's the same way government works - not the pavements or roads, its just to make people behave and cull the wolves out of the sheep herd. Of course governments, corporate or otherwise, aren't technically doing this out of goodne

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