New Delhi: The latest argument between Apple and Fortnite maker Epic Games isn’t over yet. Epic has been fighting Apple for years about the company’s revenue-sharing rules in the App Store. While Epic’s lawsuit against Apple was defeated last year, many of its points were repeated in another lawsuit filed against Apple in March by the Department of Justice and 17 state attorneys general.
In Europe, the new Digital Markets Act seemed to let Epic launch its own Epic Games Store on iOS and bring Fortnite back to the platform, with lower fees to Apple. However, Apple supposedly rejected the game store twice because parts of it looked too much like its own App Store, especially the “install” and “in-app purchase” buttons.
1/3 Apple has rejected our Epic Games Store notarization submission twice now, claiming the design and position of Epic’s “Install” button is too similar to Apple's "Get" button and that our "In-app purchases" label is too similar to the App Store's "In-App Purchases" label.
— Epic Games Newsroom (@EpicNewsroom) July 5, 2024
After Epic publicly complained about Apple’s “arbitrary, obstructive” rejections and reported its concerns to European regulators, Apple approved the game store but said Epic would still need to make changes in a future update.
All settled? Not really, Epic then posted that it was “disputing” Apple, with founder and CEO Tim Sweeney saying that the situation had “taken a turn towards the absurd.”
“Apple is now telling reporters that this approval is temporary and are demanding we change the buttons in the next version, which would make our store less standard and harder to use,” Sweeney said. “We’ll fight this.”
It seems Epic will resist making further changes to its game store. We’ll see how Apple responds.
