When Fortnite SUED Apple...

In August 20 20, Epic Games deliberately picked a fight with Apple. At the time, Fortnite on iPhone and iPad was required to use Apple's payment system for purchases, which meant Apple took a fixed 30% cut of the money players spent on stuff like V-Bucks. Epic didn't want to pay that cut, so they secretly orchestrated a strategy to break out of Apple's 30% commission, called Project Liberty. The Project Liberty plan unfolded in three carefully timed phases. The first phase was the bait. Epic secretly rolled out a server-side update to Fortnite. It offered players a 20% discount on V-Bucks if they paid Epic directly instead of using Apple or Google's payment systems. The second phase was the trap. Epic knew this violated store policies. As predicted, Apple and Google immediately removed Fortnite from their platforms within hours. The final phase was the strike. The moment the ban happened, Epic triggered a massive, pre-packaged legal and marketing campaign. They instantly filed a 62-page, anti-monopoly federal lawsuit. The case became one of the biggest legal battles in gaming, but when the court finally ruled in 20 21, [disappointed] Epic had mostly lost. The judge found that Epic had deliberately broken its agreement with Apple by using its own payment system, meaning Apple was allowed to terminate Epic's developer agreement and keep Fortnite off the App Store. Epic was also ordered to pay Apple 30 percent of the money it had collected through its unauthorized payment system, which came to more than three and a half million dollars for the period covered by the ruling. Epic did win one important part of the case. The judge ordered Apple to stop preventing developers from telling customers about alternative ways to pay outside the App Store. But that didn't put Fortnite back on the iPhone. Epic's much bigger claims that Apple was operating an illegal monopoly were rejected, so the company had failed to achieve its main goal of forcing Apple to change how the App Store worked. The loss meant that Fortnite was cut off from millions of potential players using iPhones and iPads. Even years later, the dispute continued through appeals and further fights over Apple's compliance with the court's orders. In 20 25, a judge found Apple had willfully violated the injunction, leading to another major confrontation between the two companies, and the legal battle continued into 20 26, when the Supreme Court agreed to hear Apple's appeal. #gaming #lawsuit #fortnitevsapple