Epic Games claims Apple has terminated its developer account on iOS
According to Epic Games, it will no longer be able to develop and maintain apps on the Apple ecosystem, which it claims violates EU's Digital Markets Act.
Epic Games and Apple’s continued legal contention is heating up this week with the former accusing the latter of terminating its developer account and privileges in the iOS ecosystem. If such is indeed the case, Epic Games is no longer able to develop or maintain apps on the App Store, including its plans to launch the Epic Games Store on iOS. Epic Games claims this flies in the face of rules recently established in the EU Digital Markets Act.
Epic Games posted its claim of Apple terminating its developer account via the Epic Games Newsroom this week. The company claims that Apple’s decision to terminate its developer account may be closely related to Epic’s development of an Epic Games Store app on iOS, which it then intended to use to relaunch Fortnite on iOS under the new rules of the European Digital Markets Act (DMA).
Source: Epic Games
Epic believes that Apple terminated its account to stop the Epic Games Store launch, which it also claims violates the DMA:
Epic Games and Apple have continued to poke, prod, and take each other to court over various legal rights to app development and distribution on the iOS ecosystem for several years. With the passing of EU’s DMA, Epic Games felt like it had a win on its hands, but Apple continues to curtail Epic at every turn possible. Stay tuned as we continue to follow this story for the latest updates and details.
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replyTJ Denzer posted a new article, Epic Games claims Apple has terminated its developer account on iOS
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Apple has terminated Epic's dev account in Europe just ahead of Epic releasing Fortnite for iOS under the new terms set by EU against Apple's antisteering approach (that is, Apple is supposed to allow apps with third party stores on it). Apple claims the termination is because Epic was critical of how Apple responded to the EU DMA change, and that Fortnite represented a threat to Apple's ecosystem.
https://www.epicgames.com/site/en-US/news/apple-terminated-epic-s-developer-account?sessionInvalidated=true-
You'll only be able to use alternative app stores outside of the EU for a "grace period" of time.
https://www.macrumors.com/2024/03/06/alternative-ios-app-stores-eu-grace-period/
Apple is really trying hard to ruin a lot of the good will they've built up. Their malicious compliance is pretty fucking bad right now. -
in the DMA they have to follow FRAND (fair reasonable and nondiscriminatory) rules for allowing 3rd party stores
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32022R1925
so one could argue this is discriminatory, since its not about epic breakign contract its more about apple being petty af -
Apple’s response
“Epic’s egregious breach of its contractual obligations to Apple led courts to determine that Apple has the right to terminate ‘any or all of Epic Games’ wholly owned subsidiaries, affiliates, and/or other entities under Epic Games’ control at any time and at Apple’s sole discretion.’ In light of Epic’s past and ongoing behavior, Apple chose to exercise that right.”
Epic wants to make this about the DMA, but Epic lost in court to Apple already, so it’s not really surprising.
Also I have no real sympathy for Epic since they clearly enjoy pretending they are hero against a big evil company for PR reasons, as if they aren’t a company that is also driven by profits.
source: https://9to5mac.com/2024/03/06/epic-games-dev-account-dead/
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the egregious breach of contractual obligations in this case is a mean tweet?
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but that suit had long since concluded when Apple gave Epic a new developer account to use?
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'nice app you've got there, would be a shame if something happened to it'
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Except, the EU has ruled that Apple must open the app store in a fair and non discrimatory manner, to be complaint with the DMA.
The rational told by Apple to Epic is extremely flimsy, mostly based on Sweeney making negative comments on Apple's plan to comply with the DMA. The EU may accept that but I doubt it... They would challenge Apple to show the actual harm of allowing Epic on the storefront.-
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I would hope you have zero sympathy, this is trillion dollar corporations and billionaires fighting. It is a case of corporate law and government monopoly, they are already winners x1000 and don't need a drop of pity.
To me, this discussion is about Apple's control of the smartphone market and when is that control abused in a monopoly type setting? Do we think Apple has the right to ban developers for no cause? If this was Windows in 1998 and Microsoft banned a program out of pettiness, I would expect and support the government looking into the case. -
maybe a better framework to analyze corporate behavior is how it impacts consumers and other businesses rather than which CEO you do or do not like better
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Truth. It's been known for 30+ years Apple & games don't belong together.
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…with cocaine. And hookers!
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do you think 'build your own phone and ecosystem' is actually a real suggestion? if you were running Epic would you take that idea seriously?
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Epic easily spent tens of millions on litigation and didn't have (enough) clear cut wins where Fornite is back in the Apple ecosystem. Fuck Epic.
Epic isn't some altruistic company trying to free everyone, they are just as greedy. Fuck Epic.
Epic could have quietly constantly negotiated with Apple while making money, but instead went with the silent update that fucked them. Fuck Epic.
Epic should have partnered with a phone builder, forked Android, and tried to attract developers to their platform/phone instead. Fuck Epic.
TL;DR: hahahahaha, Fuck Epic.-
Apple owning a significant percentage of the smartphone market and being able to collect 30% of all transactions seems pretty fucked up just by itself
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This was even stupider and more wrong than your first post so congrats I guess. Since we're on the subject of ignorance of antitrust you should take a look at the antitrust suits against Google for using market power to make it impossible to ship forked Android OSes. Or maybe you think that behavior is also fine because Fuck Facebook lolz
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the problem with this logic is apple would just cut their royalty rates to 0% once competition arrives, and the company that makes a smartphone would juist get destroyed. so theres no incentive to provide an alternative
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