The two tech companies are fighting a legal battle. What is at stake are in-app payments. All because Apple doesn’t allow apps to provide shopping links outside of the App Store.
But last Friday, a US court ruled that Apple will have to change the rules and authorize the integration of links in applications that direct users to third-party websites to subscribe or buy digital content.
This court decision could harm the sales of the App Stores, which in 2020 obtained about 64,000 million dollars of profit, or approximately 54,000 million euros. Reactions to this decision were immediate and Apple shares fell 3% that day.
Epic Games can appeal the decision
Despite having suffered this blow, Apple won in the rest of the claims and, therefore, can continue to charge commissions of 15% to 30% on all purchases made in the App Store.
However, Epic Games has already stated that it plans to appeal this decision. Tim Sweeney, CEO of the video game giant, posted on Twitter that “the decision was not a victory for developers or users.” Also clarifying that “Epic is fighting for fair competition in payment modes in applications and application stores.”
The battle of Fortnite
The video game company makes money from its most popular game every time players buy V-coins or in-game currency to buy costumes and other cosmetic changes.
With this action, the intention of Epic is to have authorization to install its own application store and, thus, avoid Apple’s commission rate. The company recently updated Fortnite to lower the price of its in-game currency if players made this purchase directly from Epic.
In response, Apple removed Fortnite from the App Store. This means that new iOS users cannot download this title and players with the game already installed cannot update.
For this reason, Epic has filed a lawsuit against Apple. But in this specific case, the US court ruled that Epic violated its contract with Apple and that it will have to pay the last 30% of the total revenue it collected, on iOS devices, through direct payments.