Apple Lies About Epic Again
As we’ve said all along, we would welcome Epic’s return to the App Store if they agree to play by the same rules as everyone else.
Epic has asked Apple to reactivate our Fortnite development account. Epic promises that it will adhere to Apple’s guidelines whenever and wherever we release products on Apple platforms.
Apple has exercised its discretion not to reinstate Epic’s developer program account at this time. Furthermore, Apple will not consider any further requests for reinstatement until the district court’s judgment becomes final and nonappealable.
Tim Sweeney (MacRumors, Hacker News):
Apple lied. Apple spent a year telling the world, the court, and the press they’d “welcome Epic’s return to the App Store if they agree to play by the same rules as everyone else”. Epic agreed, and now Apple has reneged in another abuse of its monopoly power over a billion users.
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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.
This seems clear-cut to me. Yes, Epic willfully disregarded the App Store guidelines last year, and Apple had cause to terminate its developer account. But, just this month, Apple said that Epic could come back if it agreed to follow the guidelines. Epic promised to, but instead of following through, Apple now says it won’t even consider lifting the ban for potentially five years.
I say that Apple lied again because, last September, Epic reported that Apple was going to block its customers from using “Sign In with Apple.” Apple told The Verge and John Gruber that this was not, and never was, the case. But then it came out in court filings that Epic was telling the truth.
It’s surprising that Apple, which has historically been very careful about communications, would make statements like these that are so easily disproven. Perhaps it was emboldened after it became apparent that there were no consequences for its CEO lying to Congress last summer—other than its reputation among people who follow these things.
The other unfortunate thing about this story is that the Fortnite Mac app is also blocked, even though it isn’t in the App Store. You need a developer account to get a Developer ID certificate and notarize your app—otherwise macOS won’t launch the app and will suggest that it might be malware.
But agreeing not to break Apple’s guidelines again seems in the spirit of what Apple had been asking for, regarding reinstating Fortnite.
I’ve long wondered if Sweeney and Epic weren’t playing a different kind of game than the one Apple is playing, and the moves today don’t dissuade me from that thinking. Yes, it’s entirely possible that Sweeney just wants this to be over with and wants Fortnite back in the App Store following the loss on most fronts with regard to their lawsuit. But actually, that doesn’t seem like the right read to me. Because if they wanted that, Sweeney obviously — obviously — would not have included a few very clear lines in his email […] to Apple’s Phil Schiller.
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It’s basically saying to Apple: read the intent (and perhaps the room!) of what the judge was going for, don’t try to litigate the language down to the lowest common denominator.
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“Wait a minute, that $2.5T company won’t let the game developer back in the App Store even after they lost the lawsuit, paid the fine, and agreed to their demands?!”
Previously:
- Epic Wants Its Developer Account Back
- Epic Denied Preliminary Injunction for Fortnite
- Epic Barred From “Sign in With Apple”
- Epic Banned From Apple Development for a Year
- Apple Terminates Epic Games’ Developer Account
- Court Rules on Epic’s Temporary Restraining Order
- Apple to Cut Epic Off From iOS and Mac Developer Tools
- Tim Cook’s App Store Testimony
