Apple threatens to ban Epic Games' developer account over Fortnite protest

Apple and Epic Games have been duking it out in a public lawsuit. Fortnite was pulled from Apple's App Store after it tried to introduce an independent payment system that violated the guidelines laid down by Apple. Since then, Epic Games has filed a suit against Apple claiming that the company is trying to get a monopoly in the software gaming market. Now, the game developer has stated that Apple is threatening to terminate its account altogether. 

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Apple threatens to block Epic Games

Epic Games recently shared a tweet along with a new filing which asks the Northern District California to stop Apple from terminating its developer account. In the new filing, Epic stated that Apple is not just harming the game developer's ecosystem but also harming millions of players who enjoy Fortnite on their iOS devices. Check out excerpts of their new filing below -

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Just over two weeks ago, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook was asked during a Congressional hearing whether Apple has “ever retaliated against or disadvantaged a developer who went public about their frustrations with the App Store”. Mr. Cook testified, “We do not retaliate or bully people. It’s strongly against our company culture.”1 But Apple has done just that. When Epic gave users of its app Fortnite a choice of how they wanted to make purchases, Apple retaliated by removing Fortnite from its App Store. Then when Epic sued Apple to break its monopoly on app stores and in-app payments, Apple retaliated ferociously. It told Epic that by August 28, Apple will cut off Epic’s access to all development tools necessary to create software for Apple’s platforms—including for the Unreal Engine Epic offers to third-party developers, which Apple has never claimed violated any Apple policy. Not content simply to remove Fortnite from the App Store, Apple is attacking Epic’s entire business in unrelated areas.

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In addition, Apple’s retaliation represents an existential threat to Epic’s Unreal Engine. OS providers like Apple routinely make certain software and developer tools available to software developers, for free or a small fee, to enable the development of software that will run on the OS. Apple intends to deny Epic access to that widely available material. Without that access, Epic cannot develop future versions of the Unreal Engine for use on iOS or macOS.

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