A punishment without reward
The judge thought it appropriate that Epic Games had to pay $ 6 million to Apple for all damages caused by inviting users to make payments through a gateway other than the App Store. In return, Apple had to offer other payment methods in its store so that users and developers themselves had other opportunities.
This is excellent news for users and developers, although obviously Apple could see less money than it currently generates. For that reason, Apple may now have less esteem than ever for Epic Games, so we should not be surprised by the way they act from Cupertino.
Apple will continue to delay the return of Fortnite
As Tim Sweeeney himself has published on his official Twitter account, the Epic manager sent a personal email to Phil Schiller to inform that they had made the payment of the 6 million dollars and that for now they were still unable to republish the game on iOS and Mac as the Fortnite developer account is not active.
Late last night, Apple informed Epic that Fortnite will be blacklisted from the Apple ecosystem until the exhaustion of all court appeals, which could be as long as a 5-year process. pic.twitter.com/QCD7wogJef
– Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) September 22, 2021
According to the manager, Epic would commit to update the versions of the game on both platforms immediately, so he hoped that the situation would be corrected after the latest events so that everything could return to “normal”. But it seems that this is not what is going to happen. Not at least in the short term.
Epic calls Apple a liar
Apple’s response was not going to take long, and through its lawyers, it responded to Epic informing that it rejects the request requested by Sweeney, and not only that, but it will also appeal the judge’s decision while it can, so the situation could be continue lengthening until the trial is final, something that could be lengthened up to a total of 5 years.
Faced with this situation, Sweeney has expressed his discomfort, assuring that Apple is a liar and that he has not kept his word to facilitate the situation after hearing the judge’s decision. This would complicate things a lot for Epic, although for the user it would continue exactly the same as in recent months, so you should forget to play Fortnite again on iOS and Mac for a long time.
