Epic vs Apple – Round 1

Epic Games, the creators of Fortnite, have taken the gloves off in move to actively protest against Apple’s commission gauging when selling products inside of iOS apps.

In a legal suit filed in California Epic Games claim that Apple’s enforcement of their own in-house payment system is anti-competitive and a commission rate of 30% is ridiculously high and unwarranted.

Apple have long maintained the high commission comes with the assurance of protecting their users and their privacy, enforcing the requirement that all in-app payments be processed using the company’s own system.

For the most part, smaller devs have no choice and reluctantly fork over nearly a third of each transaction made to Apple’s bottom line. Larger companies like Amazon have long stood against this and removed purchase processing from their apps, but no one has formally taken the company to task, until now.

Using a parody of Apple’s own infamous 1984 commercial, Epic Games has decided to take the company to task and stand up to what many have seen as a bully-tactic about bottom lines rather than user privacy and safety.

Personally I could care less about having Fortnite on my iPhone, but the commission structure is beyond incomprehensible to me and I’m glad that someone is standing up to them. It needed to be the likes of an Epic too, with no skin in the app game or hardware game they’re likely the only company big enough to make a stand.