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Epic Games codenamed its battle plan to fight Apple 'Project Liberty'

Tim Sweeney says Epic Games' frustrations with Apple had been building for years in a new interview.

February 10, 2021 3:05 PM

Epic Games took on Apple late last Summer when the company deliberately violated the App Store’s terms of service, which resulted in Fortnite being removed from the digital shop. Since then, it’s been a back and forth of lawsuits, accusations, and cartoon trailers that parody 38-year old commercials. Now, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney is opening up and delving deep into the company’s ongoing feud with Apple Inc.

Tim Sweeney sat down with CNN Business in December 2020 for an interview that saw the light this week. In the interview, we get a lot of background information to Epic Games’ clash with Apple. "Epic's frustration with Apple especially, and Google to some extent, had been building up for at least three years. Ever since Fortnite grew to have a large audience, we felt stifled by several things," Sweeney shared. His company’s frustrations stemmed from Apple’s App Store policy, which forced devs to give the tech company a 30% split of all profits made, including those made on in-app purchases. With Fortnite being the phenomenon it is, you can imagine how much money Epic Games was forced to fork over to Apple, and how things had reached a boiling point.

What’s really fascinating is that Sweeney admits that Epic Games’ breaking of App Store TOS and provoking Apple was entirely calculated and premeditated. Epic had been working on a “battle plan” to take on Apple for months, one that they nicknamed “Project Liberty.” We saw Project Liberty go into effect last Summer when Epic Games quickly countered Apple’s move to pull Fortnite from the App Store with a 60-page lawsuit, as well as a full CG video that parodied Apple’s iconic 1984 ad.

Since the feud was ignited back in August of 2020, we’ve seen both Apple and Epic Games go at it very publicly. Most recently, we learned that Apple CEO Tim Cook will undergo a 7-hour deposition for the Fortnite case. For future updates on the matter, be sure to bookmark the Apple vs Epic Games topic page on Shacknews.

Donovan Erskine

News Editor

Donovan is a journalist from Maryland. His oldest gaming memory is playing Pajama Sam on his mom's desktop during weekends. Pokémon Emerald, Halo 2, and the original Star Wars Battlefront 2 were some of the most influential titles in awakening his love for video games. After interning for Shacknews throughout college, Donovan graduated from Bowie State University in 2020 with a major in broadcast journalism and joined the team full-time. He is a huge film fanatic and will talk with you about movies and games all day. You can follow him on twitter @Donimals_

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