Epic Games announced that it filed a lawsuit against Apple, accusing the company of anti-competitive practices.
Epic Games Sues Apple
The lawsuit [PDF] came after Apple removed Fortnite from the App Store because Epic Games added an in-app payment system that bypassed Apple’s own, thus violating guidelines. Since the lawsuit came so quickly, the company likely knew its game would be removed.
At the same time, Epic Games hosted an in-game event using the hashtag #FreeFortnite and explained the situation to players:
Epic Games has defied the App Store Monopoly. In retaliation, Apple is blocking Fortnite from a billion devices. Join the fight to stop 2020 from becoming ‘1984′.
Epic isn’t suing Apple for money. Instead it wants the ability to build its own app store outside of Apple’s that users could sideload onto their devices, similar to how Mac users can download software from the internet.
Epic has also sued Google for the same reasons, although it can still offer its store outside of Google’s Play Store.
Fortnite is a highly addictive game, as many others are. What a shame humans spend their time on such stuff when there are are much more edifying things to do. The negative impact of games on global health (including lack of sleep and accidents of all kinds at work and on roads that kill) and productivity is shocking. Amazingly, nobody seems to care!