The apple brand fights back and calls into question the continuity of Epic Games in the App Store and the Mac App Store; Epic goes to court.
New turn in events that have been facing two of the most powerful companies on the technological scene for days; so much so, that Apple has counterattacked by announcing that it will withdraw the developer tools for iOS from Epic Games as of August 28, 2020, all after Epic’s move on the payment method in Fortnite and the subsequent withdrawal of the app from both the App Store and Google Play, the latter also by Google.
Uncertain future of Epic and Unreal Engine on iOS
This has been communicated by Epic Games through its official channels, indicating that they have been informed by Apple that as of next Friday, August 28, their development tools for iOS will be canceled. This movement has a clear consequence: Epic Games will lose access to the iOS tools, with which Unreal Engine, one of the engines most used by thousands of game developers for iOS and macOS, would be disabled for these ecosystems, thus losing a great source of income for Epic.
Apple removed Fortnite from the App Store and has informed Epic that on Friday, August 28 Apple will terminate all our developer accounts and cut Epic off from iOS and Mac development tools. We are asking the court to stop this retaliation. Details here: https://t.co/3br1EHmyd8
– Epic Games Newsroom (@EpicNewsroom) August 17, 2020
At the moment, the motivation for this new action by Apple has not transcended, although it is likely that it is directly related to a clause that would grant Apple the possibility of withdrawing licenses in the event of non-compliance with regulations or in case of legal disputes such as the that occupies us. In any case, Epic Games has already announced that it will take legal action against this new business move from the Cupertino firm.
“Without the appropriate development tools, Epic will not be able to develop Unreal Engine updates for Apple operating systems and will be forced to withdraw the Unreal Engine from those platforms,” they explain from Epic, adding that developers will be forced to use other engines instead of the Unreal Engine to keep running on Apple devices, which would be a major setback for thousands of creators and companies.
We will see how all this confrontation ends and what the next steps are for both companies in the coming days, since the deadline of August 28 does not give much room for movement to reach a beneficial agreement for both parties; and also for third parties.
