Apple Bans Fortnite from App Store

Tsing

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Image: Epic Games



Apple has kicked Fortnite, one of the world’s most popular battle royale games, off of its App Store. The decision was prompted by developer Epic Games, which decided to implement its own in-app payment system to bypass Apple’s arguably draconian fees (the company collects a 30 percent commission from all digital purchases). Needless to say, Tim Cook wasn’t happy about that.



Epic Games predicted that this would happen, though. The developer has already released a video mocking Apple’s “1984” ad, which encourages Fortnite fans to support its “#FreeFornite” fight against the “App Store Monopoly.” “Epic Games has defied the App Store Monopoly,” a passage in the video reads. “In retaliation, Apple is blocking Fortnite from a billion devices. Join the fight to stop 2020 from becoming ‘1984.’”...
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Monopoly, lol. Last I checked you didn't have to use IOS in order to play Fortnite. I can barely stand to play games on my iPad never mind something as small as a phone.
 
I think this falls more into the Anti-Trust category that Microsoft ran afoul of back with Internet Explorer.

It's not a monopoly, per say. But Apple does have a good chunk of mobile market share, and you have no ability to add software to the device except for the Apple App Store. At least with Android you can still side-load apps outside of the Google Play store, whereas Apple has always cracked down on jailbreaking pretty quickly and never allowed any sort of legitimized method other than the App Store to load software onto the devices.

The whole point of forcing the App Store, at least on paper, was to ensure a safety and quality. But now that they are blatantly banning apps just based on revenue reasons (well, Apple has always done that, it just never has been so high profile), that may get a judge to react and call it anti-competitive, in the same vein Microsoft was threatened with because of Internet Explorer.

This is entirely an attempt to force Apple to open up their walled garden. I don't really care about Fortnite, but I would like to see a side-load or legit jailbreak option become available on iOS, and if this raises visibility enough, hey, great. I don't know that the case is strong enough... the MS Anti Trust case, MS had 95%+ market share for Windows desktop OS at the time, whereas Apple only has around a 45% market share on mobile devices.

Since it appears to be headed to court, I don't think Epic will force Apple to do anything. The market share just doesn't show that Apple has an effective monopoly on anything, so I don't think it runs afoul of anything legally per the letter of the law. I think Apple will argue they are more like the video game consoles - they are entitled to lock down their hardware and charge some sort of licensing fee for developers to have access, they just happen to be doing that via the App Store, and that's a pretty good argument to be made with a good deal of precedent behind it. I think the Epic court case is not really meant to be won though (although I don't doubt they would love to) - I think that is more about piling on the public shaming. The 1984 parody was clever, and especially after the Apple v PrePear, really highlights just how far Apple has fallen from the tree.

I don't really care that Apple takes a cut on the App Store. They probably should and are entitled to, for anything that gets distributed via that method. I just hate that, apart from web-based applications (which was the original method of deploying an iOS app, if anyone remembers the original iOS there was to be no native access to the hardware at all), the App Store and playing the Jailbreaking game are the only ways to run software on the machines.
 
I think everyone understands when you sell the app, they get a cut. After all a lot is done for you. ( 30 percent is too high at this point but whatever) But this is getting a cut for absolutely nothing.. these are services run totally separate that they want to get a cut on an ongoing basis. I am sure no one would say anything if they had to pay based on the first user payment, and just be that. Or in the case for fortnite, arrange for a flat fee for the download, nothing to excessive, just something... But THEY WANT IT ALL. And why not? They can have it all in so many ways.
 
Uvilla said:
I think everyone understands when you sell the app, they get a cut. After all a lot is done for you. ( 30 percent is too high at this point but whatever) But this is getting a cut for absolutely nothing.. these are services run totally separate that they want to get a cut on an ongoing basis. I am sure no one would say anything if they had to pay based on the first user payment, and just be that. Or in the case for fortnite, arrange for a flat fee for the download, nothing to excessive, just something... But THEY WANT IT ALL. And why not? They can have it all in so many ways.
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"30 percent is too high at this point..."

Except literally every store takes this cut except for Epic and itch.io.
 
Google play also takes a 30 percent cut and thanks to this shadyove by epic has ALSO banned fortnite from their store. Epic is in essence challenging the status quo because they can.
 
Grimlakin said:
Google play also takes a 30 percent cut and thanks to this shadyove by epic has ALSO banned fortnite from their store. Epic is in essence challenging the status quo because they can.
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It is amusing to watch Sweeney believe he is in any position to take on these enormous corporation just because he has one game that makes him obscene profits, and even that is on the decline with MW Warzone having more concurrent players. Now he is nurturing a new generation of entitled freeloaders with the money wasted on giving away games for free, with every announcement of a new game resulting in myriads of people asking when this or that is going to be free.
 
I think another motive comes from Tencent (re: China) and their investment in Epic. There is likely a retaliation motive here for what the US has done vs Huawei, etc. At the end of the day I don't think Epic is going to have much of a case of anti-competitive practices by Apple when they are/have taken anti-competitive actions themselves. Pot, meet kettle.
 
Well, they might win against Apple and lose against google. Key distinction, you can still install on Android.
By Apple closing off completely, the question becomes one of ownership maybe? Things like this? Its not unlike printers and the ink issue ( hp lost if not mistaken) .
Can't see it being accepted for ms to close off desktop, why would apple be special?
 
LeRoy_Blanchard said:
Just a hunch here; but I imagine a cell phone could be considered an "essential device" while a console is not.
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There's nothing about the App Store or Epic that interferes with the ability to make calls though.
 
I agree with that.

But they can make the argument of keeping their customers "safe" by controlling the apps installation.
 
LeRoy_Blanchard said:
I agree with that.

But they can make the argument of keeping their customers "safe" by controlling the apps installation.
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This is Apples public case, but it does kinda fall flat when Fortnite is only banned because it changed its IAP method... hard to argue that has much to do with public safety. But I will enjoy watching Apple try.
 
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