Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has lashed out at Apple by accusing it of having a crazy and misguided view after the ban on Fortnite. Tim took to his official Twitter handle to reply to user comments about the ongoing court case. After Epic games activated the option for the players to pay directly to the game developer for in-app purchases, Apple removed the Fortnite app from its App Store. This was Epic games’ attempt to bypass the 30% fee amount that Apple company charges.
Earlier, Tim Sweeney had stated that Apple has no right over the fruits of Epic’s labour. Sweeney’s Twitter post read, “What’s most disturbing about Apple’s position is that they seem to truly believe they ‘own’ all commerce involving phones they make, characterizing direct payment as theft, smuggling, and even shoplifting. It’s a crazy, misguided view”. To one of the users’ comments, he replied that Apple does not own a right to control the user and his tax payment just because it has sold a phone to him.
Epic Games has been fighting against Google and Apple through its #FreeFortnite campaign. Epic has quoted this as a fight against “anti-competitive restrictions on mobile device marketplace”. Fortnite has not yet gotten permission to be unblocked on the Apple App Store, according to US District Judge Yvonne Gonzales Rogers, who is working on the case.
According to Apple, its decision of removing Fortnite from the App Store was not an unfair move. To Apple, it is reasonable to conduct. In a report by Verge, it quoted “Epic’s flagrant disregard for its contractual commitments and other misconduct has caused significant harm to Apple,” as one of the lines from Apple’s court filings.
In the report by TechCrunch, one of the lawyers representing Epic Games has stated that, “Epic chose to take a stand against Apple’s monopoly to illustrate that competition could exist on iOS, and that consumers would welcome and benefit from it. Epic did so without advance notice to Apple because Apple would otherwise have used its monopoly control to prevent that competition from happening”.
Apple has not just blocked Epic’s Fortnite, even the Facebook Games like Asphalt 9 is not supported on Apple devices. Jason Rubin, Vice president of Play has tweeted that Apple had removed numerous requests for approval of its Apple cloud concepts. Apple has not yet responded to Rubin’s allegations. Judge Rogers has recommended holding a jury trial approximately by July 2021 to clear up the civil lawsuit against Apple by Epic Games.
