Fortnite Returns To Apple US App Store After 5-Year Ban 42
Fortnite has returned to Apple's App Store in the United States after a nearly five-year absence, marking a significant victory for Epic Games in its protracted legal battle against Apple's App Store policies. The return follows an April 30 ruling where a federal judge determined Apple violated a court order requiring the company to allow greater competition for app downloads and payment methods, referring Apple to federal prosecutors for a criminal contempt investigation.
Epic CEO Tim Sweeney celebrated on X with a simple "We back fam" message. The game, which had 116 million users on Apple's platform before its 2020 removal, was banned after Epic challenged Apple's practice of charging up to 30% commission on in-app payments as anticompetitive.
Epic CEO Tim Sweeney celebrated on X with a simple "We back fam" message. The game, which had 116 million users on Apple's platform before its 2020 removal, was banned after Epic challenged Apple's practice of charging up to 30% commission on in-app payments as anticompetitive.
W's in Chat. Let's Gooooooooo!!11 (Score:2, Insightful)
A win for fans of both Fortnite and common sense.
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It will though be interesting what the knock on effect will be outside of IT. It’s a question of who owns the customer relationship, the platform or the provider. The ruling against Apple sets a precedent that ripples far beyond mobile apps.
I am waiting for the day EPIC is forced to open up Fortnite to third party stores and payment systems... Hoist with one's own petard comes to mind...
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pray to whatever deity you can that apple isn’t this petty.
Apple is possibly as petty as they go. If there is an Apple comeback backdoor, then you'd bet they are either plotting; they just haven't thought of it yet, or they were concerned about some other issue.
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They can either pay an advertising fee, or have a minimum of $10 for any App.
There are real costs to Apple for having free Apps on their store, why should Apple subsidise other businesses with free services ?
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why should Apple subsidise other businesses with free services ?
It is in Apple customers' interests and in Apples' own interests for their app store to have a wide variety of useful free and low cost apps available - that is what causes customers to even start looking through the app store. The deal is you can post free non-monetized apps for free: high quality free apps provide a service to Apple; even though your individual app is a financial net loss for Apple -- this will be compensated by higher v
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no. not the same, but you know that. grow up.
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Except these examples are not relatable at all or don't even make sense.
picture walking into a store, browsing products on shelves, and some item have a QR code that lets you buy it directly from the manufacturer, cheaper, with no cut for the retailer.
Doesn't make any sense. If the store is the one paying for the space, then why would the store spend it's own money stocking an item they don't get a cut for?
Or because you stock Coca-Cola, Coke gets the right to run a mini-store within your shelf space.
Not similar at all.
Or owning a mall means you’re forced to let anyone open a store on your property.
Nope. You can have any number of reasons to deny applications for opening a store within your property.
I don't care what the judge says - if I own the store, I make the rules. The judge cannot make me stock something I don't want to stock and will make me no mone
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If the store is the one paying for the space, then why would the store spend it's own money stocking an item they don't get a cut for?
This precisely the issue.. there is no difference really it costs apple shelf space in their store. They store, serve , maintain and have teams that review submitted software, there is an incurred cost to apple for epic putting in their little marketplace. Fortnite’s entire monetisation strategy is to give the game away for free and then sell items inside the app in a way that excludes the store from _ever_ taking a cut. A court effectively ordered Walmart to keep stocking coke , after deciding to end
Re: W's in Chat. Let's Gooooooooo!!11 (Score:2)
Apple can't stay out of trouble (Score:5, Informative)
TFS is missing an important pretext: Yesterday, the same judge that slapped them on the 30th told Apple that it had until 5:00PM tomorrow to submit a legal reason for why it was rejecting Fortnite still, and name a specific individual who has the power to make a decision on this case (and presumably that the court can hold in contempt for further non-compliance.) In its letter to Epic, it said it was taking no action until the 9th Circuit appeals court could hear its appeal. This is, yet again, another blatant violation of the court's orders. The April 30th orders specifically said that Apple is not permitted any more delays, even while it waits for its appeal, due to the severity of the ongoing misconduct in the form of repeated, unnecessary delays.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming... [arstechnica.com]
All that they're doing with this is making their chances in appeals worse because they keep showing that they think they can just freely ignore court orders that they don't like. This is a little disappointing, I was kind of hoping to see Apple submit yet another bullshit response and be taught another lesson in humility that it still hasn't learned.
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I think we have been educated, repeatedly, that those with money are not held accountable. Apple is at least 100 trumps in just on-hand cash.. They just need to give out some gratuities.
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You're not a billionaire. They're above the law.
Re: Apple can't stay out of trouble (Score:2)
Also, you can't physically put a corporation in jail.
Re: Apple can't stay out of trouble (Score:2)
Re: Apple can't stay out of trouble (Score:2)
It probably has never been done for antitrust violations, and I doubt this administration will be the first to seek that. Only for failure to pay bribes.
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Antitrust violations are civil violations, so no; nobody has gone to jail for antitrust violations.
That's not what we're talking about here though. The judge issued a court order that Apple must do a thing by a date. They haven't done that thing, and the date is passed. That is contempt of court, which can rise to a criminal violation if it's wanton disregard for the court order.
This is why the judge basically said "approve their app by the 23rd, or we'll be talking about it in court the morning of the 2
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If I violated a judge's order I'd be held in contempt of court.
I heard from a very rich, very powerful friend, and good looking too I might add, when you're powerful, they let you do it. That's what they say. Rotten corrupt activist judges, that's what we have, they better get their act together because two big beautiful engines, I don't believe in stealth I don't, ugly judges, but it'll have two big powerful engines we'll see, and we'll call it the F-224755 super Trump. I don't know but that's what they want to call it
Re: Apple can't stay out of trouble (Score:3)
I heard from a very rich, very powerful friend, and good looking too I might add, when you're powerful, they let you do it.
None of that. If you're that wealthy, odds are you have the patience and are legally sophisticated enough (or have good enough lawyers on retainer) to rely on ambiguities in the law in order to avoid any consequences.
You don't necessarily have to be wealthy in order to get all of that. If you've ever watched any documentaries about serial squatters, who generally have very little money at all, you'll notice they do something similar to live rent-free for up to years at a time. Some of the more interesting c
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Yesterday, the same judge that slapped them on the 30th told Apple that it had until 5:00PM tomorrow to submit a legal reason for why it was rejecting Fortnite still, and name a specific individual who has the power to make a decision on this case (and presumably that the court can hold in contempt for further non-compliance.) In its letter to Epic.
I think I agree that this is being done in good faith (to the court) pending appeal. From what I recall Apple had a perfectly valid legal reason to ban Fortnite - Epic games breached the Terms of Service of the app store, which is also why their attempt to get an injunction to put them back into the store was rejected.
There's a valid reason to claim that Epic's breach had nothing to do with the case - since they could have brought a case against Apple's terms without breaching the ToS at the time, and there
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Good faith? It's not good faith if it took a court order! It's called foot-dragging. Pending appeal isn't a shield against non-compliance. Are you dating Tim Cook or something?
Perfectly valid reason? Fuck them and their ToS. They were being anti-competitive, so there was no perfectly valid or legal reason to ban Fortnite. There was only a contract-based reason, but we have anti-trust law, so it was a perfectly stupid reason. The breach itself, however, was perfectly valid civil disobedience, which historically has allowed anti-trust to be tested in court, whereas kissing ass like you suggest would do jack shit.
Hard to call someone anti-competitive when Android plays Fortnight just fine and has a larger market share. Then there's all the other platforms and devices Fortnight runs on.
Civil disobedience is just a label, it doesn't hand wave away trespassing charges or breach of contract. It's kind of the point of civil disobedience to take those charges and deal with the repercussions to raise awareness. Ok, awareness raised, they still have to deal with consequences, and I still don't see how Apple is being anti-co
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Good faith? It's not good faith if it took a court order!
Re-read my post. And remember for everything else the court has ordered them to do so far they have circumvented it in some way or another.
Perfectly valid reason? Fuck them and their ToS.
Saying that doesn't make it any less valid. The reality remains breach of a ToS is legal grounds to terminate a contract. The court specifically ruled in Apple's favour here because getting back into the app store was literally step one of the lawsuit, and Epic lost that point (though Apple overreached by blocking Epic's French subsidiary responsible for the Unreal engin
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I think I agree that this is being done in good faith (to the court) pending appeal.
Good faith? It's being done in fear of some Apple EVP being tossed in holding and million dollar fines for contempt being imposed until Apple stopped stalling (16 months after losing its appeal of the injunction to the Supreme Court, and 20 days after the Court imposed sanctions, further restrictions, and made clear that its patience was at an end).
There was no good faith. There is fear of the hammer dropping even harder.
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No, Apple's EVP has no risk of being put in jail by contesting the court order. At best their lawyers may be held in contempt. Again this one action is out of character with the rest of Apple's legal wrangling they've done so far, and it stands to reason it's part of an appeal play.
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Yes, they did. It's not open for debate [nypost.com], in view of the judge's order:
"The order, filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, demands that an Apple official 'personally responsible for ensuring compliance' appear in court on May 27 'if the parties do not file a joint notice that this issue is resolvedâ¦'"
Personally requiring an executive to appear is a big ol' red flag there, buddy.
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I wonder what the final settlement will be for Epic. 5 years off the App Store, must have cost them a lot.
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I know another guy who regularly ignores court orders and nothing happens.
Re: Apple can't stay out of trouble (Score:2)
And you're such an apologist for him too. Why do you have all of this love for him? Particularly given he beats you every time you fail to line up at the apple store for the latest crappy product.
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I'm disappointed too, but for different reasons. I wanted to see Apple stand up to this judge, because while Apple's store *is* terrible in general, a judge cannot force a store to carry a specific item they don't want to carry and doesn't make them any money. This is like a judge telling a grocery store they must stock and advertise Dave's Killer Bread, but the grocery store doesn't get any money for the space used or the bread being sold.
It's not a valid court order to begin with. Apple doesn't need a leg
Re: Apple can't stay out of trouble (Score:3)
That is not at all correct. Initially what the judge ordered apple to do was very modest. Apple appealed it all the way to the supreme court and lost. So what do they do? Ignore the court's orders and then lie about it. As she said in the April 30th orders: "This is an injunction, not a negotiation. There are no do-overs once a party violates a court order." And guess what? This isn't at all unheard of, and appeals courts really frown on what apple has done here.
This is a "play stupid games, win stupid priz
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I don't give a flying fuck what the judge said, she's a fucking retard to begin with. I fucking hate Apple and want to see them destroyed, but I want them to be destroyed fairly. Epic's entire complaint is bullshit and always has been. They do not have some sort of "right" to be in Apple's store. No one does. Is the Apple store bullshit and overcharges on everything? Absolutely. But the right answer was not to complain and sue them.
In fact, it's worse than my previous example. These dumbfucks basically orde
I Still had V-Bucks on Apple (Score:3)