Over the past week, Epic Games has been at “war” with Apple. It started with implementing a direct payment system in Fortnite that cut out Apple, leading to Apple removing Fortnite from the iOS store. Since then, Epic has filed a lawsuit against Apple, and Apple has threatened to take away Epic’s developer tools, which could end Unreal Engine support on the platform. The latest action by Apple is a legal filing alleging Epic pursued a special deal for Fortnite, a claim that Epic CEO Tim Sweeney claims is misleading.
It all comes back to the merit of Epic’s lawsuit against Apple. Public perception of the lawsuit hinges on Epic proving that Apple is behaving monopolistically and that a successful lawsuit would be beneficial for all App Store developers. It behooves Apple then to show, or at least argue, that Epic’s lawsuit is purely in its own self-interest at the direct expense of Apple. Apple claiming that Sweeney sought an agreement purely to the benefit of Epic is in pursuit of that.
Sweeney has fired back, however. He posted multiple tweets today showing the emails in which he was claimed to be pursuing a “special deal” for Epic, allegedly the exact emails Apple is citing in its filing. As Sweeney shows, Epic’s request states clearly that, “We hope that Apple will also make these options equally available to all iOS developers.” In other words, Epic not only requested a “special deal” for itself, but also the same special deal for all developers.
In a second tweet, Sweeney showed that he even went further with his requests for a more open Apple marketplace. He wrote in his email, “We hope that Apple will reflect on its platform restrictions and begin to make historic changes that bring to the world’s billion iOS consumers the rights and freedoms enjoyed on the world’s leading open computing platforms.” To say the least, Sweeney and Epic have been pushing for changes at Apple for some time.
To say the situation is complicated would be putting it lightly. There are two different ways to look at the situation. The first is from a purely legal perspective and the other is from the perspective of public perception. It’s unclear how this exchange effects either front, though Sweeney’s willingness to discuss it on Twitter is likely a hint.
This isn’t Sweeney’s last tweet about Apple, or even his only response to Apple’s filing. He later responds to Apple comparing Epic to “shoplifters,” saying an app sold on iOS that doesn’t pay a fee is like shoplifting at an Apple retail store. To say this back and forth between Apple and Epic is only going to get more intense would likely be a serious understatement.
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