{"id":441844,"date":"2025-12-12T06:59:15","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T06:59:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/441844\/"},"modified":"2025-12-12T06:59:15","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T06:59:15","slug":"tim-sweeney-on-the-future-of-fortnite-after-another-win-over-apple","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/441844\/","title":{"rendered":"Tim Sweeney on the future of Fortnite after another win over Apple"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shortly after appeals court judges ruled against Apple\u2019s contempt appeal<\/a> in a years-long antitrust dispute against the makers of Fortnite, I got to talk to Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney in an interview. According to Sweeney, today\u2019s ruling \u201ccompletely shuts down\u201d Apple\u2019s App Store rules that allow it to collect \u201cjunk fees.\u201d<\/p>\n

The three-judge Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel largely affirmed an April ruling that Apple failed to comply with Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers\u2019s 2021 order<\/a> allowing app developers to link to external payment options, which Sweeney said \u201c… is really awesome for all developers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most notable part of the appeals court ruling is that the panel is asking Gonzalez Rogers to look at ways Apple could charge developers reasonable fees for purchases made in apps using outside payment links. In her April ruling<\/a>, Gonzalez Rogers blocked Apple from taking any fees from external payments because of decisions like slapping external payments with a 27 percent fee and forcing developers to make their payments links in plain text.<\/p>\n

But the appeals court says Apple \u201cshould\u201d be able to charge a fee based on \u201cthe costs that are genuinely and reasonably necessary for its coordination of external links for linked-out purchases, but no more\u201d and that Apple is \u201centitled to some compensation for the use of its intellectual property that is directly used in permitting Epic and others to consummate linked-out purchases.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you want to have an app go through review with custom linkouts, maybe there\u2019s several hundred dollars of fees associated with that every time you submit an app, which is perfectly reasonable because there are real people at Apple doing those things and Apple pays them, and we should be contributing to that,\u201d Sweeney says. But he says that the ruling, \u201ccompletely shuts down, I think, for all time, Apple\u2019s theory that they should be able to charge arbitrary junk fees for access.\u201d<\/p>\n

With these two areas that Apple would be allowed to charge for, Sweeney says that \u201cI can\u2019t imagine any justification for a percentage of developer revenue being assessed here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Weeks after the April ruling, Fortnite returned to the US App Store<\/a> \u2014 nearly five years after Apple originally kicked it off when Epic introduced its own in-app purchase system to Fortnite. And there are efforts globally to require Apple to allow third-party app stores on iOS, like the Digital Markets Act in Europe, which is the reason you can get Fortnite from the mobile Epic Games Store<\/a> in that region.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo far, Apple has taken the strategy of collecting junk fees and every territory until they\u2019re forced by law enforcers or regulators to stop,\u201d Sweeney says. \u201cI\u2019m not sure if they\u2019re going to continue that until they\u2019ve lost every single battle around the entire world, or if they are at some point going to harmonize their global policies. I certainly hope that Apple would, at some point, just try to come to a soft landing and have a single worldwide policy that works for everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sweeney expects that the Ninth Circuit\u2019s opinion<\/a> will unblock \u201ca lot\u201d of regulatory efforts around the world. \u201cWhy on earth would any self-respecting country in the world allow Apple to charge fees that the United States court has found to be illegal in the United States?\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

The ruling wasn\u2019t the only big news for Epic and Fortnite on mobile today: the game also returned to Google Play in the US<\/a> after similarly being booted by Google<\/a> when Epic added the in-app payments system to Fortnite. Epic and Google announced last month that they have agreed to settle their lawsuit<\/a>, and while the two sides are still seeking court approval for their settlement, it resolves their disputes worldwide.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been very impressed with the new generation of the Android leadership,\u201d Sweeney says. \u201cThey turned over a new leaf here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shortly after appeals court judges ruled against Apple\u2019s contempt appeal in a years-long antitrust dispute against the makers…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":441845,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[64,171,393,1815,50,1630,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-441844","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-gaming","11":"tag-interview","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-report","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115705306446319899","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=441844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/441845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}