What seemed like all fun and games surely escalated over the last couple of days to an ugly battle between Epic Games and Apple. The company that’s known for its famous game, Fortnite, had decided to start charging players directly for in-game items. As we know by now, this never sat well with Apple.
In a matter of hours, the tech company kicked Fortnite and its 250 million players from the app store late last week. Of course, the decision seemed unnecessarily harsh in Epic’s eyes as it was later followed by a lawsuit from the developer. You should keep in mind that Epic also filed a case against Google that decided to take similar action.
However, another story has been developing about Apple promising to retaliate against Epic Games for the suit that was filed on Monday this week. Epic went to social media claiming that Apple is threatening to ban the Unreal Engine code. This is a code that’s usually offered by Epic to outside game developers to help them make apps of their own.
Apple removed Fortnite from the App Store and has informed Epic that on Friday, August 28 Apple will terminate all our developer accounts and cut Epic off from iOS and Mac development tools. We are asking the court to stop this retaliation. Details here: https://t.co/3br1EHmyd8
— Epic Games Newsroom (@EpicNewsroom) August 17, 2020
“Not content simply to remove Fortnite from the App Store, Apple is attacking Epic’s entire business in unrelated areas,” Epic said in its filing, adding that Apple’s set a deadline of Aug. 28. “If the Unreal Engine can no longer support Apple platforms, the software developers that use it will be forced to use alternatives.”
In a statement posted on Monday, Apple went on to describe Epic Games as “one of the most successful developers on the App Store.” Apple added on that it wishes for the developer and its game to remain on its service. In order to do that though, Apple would have to revert Fortnite to an older version. This is in order to “comply with the guidelines they agreed to and which apply to all developers.”
So, it would seem odd to imagine why Epic Games is reporting the exact opposite in the court filing. What is clear is that Epic is not happy about the ban in the first place. Epic even launched a video parody of Apple’s famous 1984 Super Bowl Macintosh ad, depicting the game maker as battling the powerful tech giant.
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