The fires of conflict are getting hot among billion-dollar corporations, with Epic Games suing Apple over disagreements! Today (August 13), Epic Games revealed their “Mega Drop,” reducing the cost on Fortnite V-Bucks by 20% across all platforms, forever. On iOS devices, users now had the option to choose “Epic direct payment.” This cuts out the middleman and gives players their discounted V-Bucks. The decision proved to be problematic, as Apple states in its guidelines that in-app purchases must be made through their system while taking 30% of said purchases.
Almost instantly, Fortnite was removed from the App Store and blocked from receiving updates on devices that already had the battle royale shooter installed. Again, almost instantly, Epic files its lawsuit and updates its Mega Drop FAQ site with the court papers for all to see. Their logic is that Apple is becoming that which they swore to oppose, a monopoly that stifles competition. They even released a parody of the famous 1984 Macintosh commercial, titled Nineteen Eighty-Fortnite. Together with this video, the hashtag #FreeFortnite was also promoted in order to get the peoples’ favor in the Epic Games suing Apple fiasco.
This hasn’t been the first time Epic decides to take action against big marketplaces. They famously disagreed with Steam’s policies on the cut they took from developers, which hurt small studios. It should also be mentioned that some apps do allow people to directly pay without the need for Apple’s price gouging (like Grubhub, Amazon and DoorDash). The lawsuit doesn’t look to get money from Apple and asks that they remove their anti-competition guidelines and recognize them as unlawful. All of this comes at a time when several antitrust cases are being made against companies like Apple in congress, and this is probably not going to help their cause.
