explored more in-depth here<\/a>, would prevent external developers from creating iOS or MacOS games through Unreal Engine or updating existing games down the line, while Epic itself won\u2019t be able to update its Unreal Engine client on MacOS either.<\/p>\nThough Apple has yet to make a statement on this most recent development, its comments from last week seems to indicate that Apple views its reaction as a natural consequence of Epic Games\u2019 decision to knowingly violate the App Store guidelines with the controversial Fortnite<\/em> update.<\/p>\nEpic disagrees, and is asking the court to bar Apple from taking what it views as retaliation against Epic\u2019s lawsuit against Apple. From today\u2019s motion: \u201cNot content simply to remove Fortnite<\/em> from the App Store, Apple is attacking Epic\u2019s entire business in unrelated areas.\u201d<\/p>\nAs such, Epic is asking the court to prevent Apple from delisting or refusing to list Fortnite<\/em> or any of its future updates on the basis of Epic\u2019s payment processing options, from removing or modifying versions of Fortnite<\/em> already present on players\u2019 devices, or from taking any \u201cadverse action\u201d against Epic (like the decision to cut its developer tools access) over Epic’s decision to include payment processing options.<\/p>\n\u201cWhen Epic gave users of its app Fortnite<\/em> a choice of how they wanted to make purchases, Apple retaliated by removing Fortnite<\/em> from its App Store,\u201d reads Epic\u2019s motion. \u201cThen when Epic sued Apple to break its monopoly on app stores and in-app payments, Apple retaliated ferociously. It told Epic that by August 28, Apple will cut off Epic\u2019s access to all development tools necessary to create software for Apple\u2019s platforms\u2014including for the Unreal Engine Epic offers to third-party developers, which Apple has never claimed violated any Apple policy.\u201d<\/p>\nEpic argues that it stands to face significant harms in the short term if Apple is allowed to carry out its alleged retaliation. Part of its argument in favor of the motion hinges on the fact that Epic believes it is \u201clikely to succeed on the merits of its antitrust claim\u201d given antitrust rules outlined in Section 1 of the commerce-regulating law The Sherman Act.<\/p>\n
But even if Apple were to come out on top, Epic argues any damages against Apple could be \u201credressed monetarily\u201d while the harms Epic says it will endure in the meantime could not be fixed through the exchanging of funds.<\/p>\n
Part of that is because of the reputational harms Epic says it faces by Apple\u2019s actions against it and its properties, both with the player base of Fortnite<\/em> users and with the community of external developers that use Unreal Engine in their day-to-day. <\/p>\nOn the Fortnite<\/em> side of things, iOS users already can\u2019t receive any of Fortnite<\/em>\u2019s frequent updates and, once they fall behind, will lose the ability to play with the full pool of up-to-date Fortnite<\/em> players on other platforms. This stands to, from Epic\u2019s perspective, destroy the trust between Epic and players, \u201ca loss that is impossible to quantify.\u201d<\/p>\nThe potential harm Epic perceives against external developers that either use Unreal Engine to create iOS and Mac games or the devs who primarily work in Unreal Engine from a MacOS-powered device has already been stated. \u201cThe ensuing impact on the Unreal Engine\u2019s viability, and the trust and confidence developers have in that engine, cannot be repaired with a monetary award,\u201d reads the motion. \u201cThis is quintessential irreparable harm.\u201d <\/p>\n
In Epic\u2019s words: \u201cWithout [an injunction], millions of players will lose their ability to stay connected on Epic games, and an entire ecosystem based on the Unreal Engine will collapse.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Epic is asking a California court to protect it from what the company describes as retaliation from Apple over the escalating conflict between the two massive tech companies. It\u2019s the latest development in a dispute that rapidly unfolded late last week and ultimately saw Epic Games filing a lawsuit against both Apple and Google for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":116854,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116853\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}