Epic Games Gets A Small Win in Legal Battle with Apple

As you may be aware, there is currently a very ugly legal battle underway between Epic Games and Apple. If you’re not aware, while I’m not going to go into the full history, I can give you a quick recap.

• Epic Games attempted to bypass Apple’s 30% commission on all transactions
• Apple responded by removing Fortnite from it’s IOS platform
• Epic Games issued legal action against Apple over ‘monopoly’ grounds
• Apple threatened to remove Unreal Engine support from its IOS platform unless Epic Games complied

So, yeah, as you can probably tell this is more than a little messy. Following a report via TechPowerUp, however, while this legal dispute is likely to take months (if not years) to resolve, Epic Games has at least secured a minor early victory in what was otherwise a largely disappointing first day at the courts.

Epic Games VS Apple

As part of it’s ‘prayer’ to the court (a legal term basically meaning that you’re telling the court what you’re there for) Epic Games cited that Apple’s removal of Fortnite from the IOS platform had caused them “irreparable harm”. In this regard, the court has not agreed with Epic Games in these early stages stating that Epic “strategically chose to breach its agreements with Apple.” – A not entirely unfair statement as Epic was attempting to bypass the TOS regarding payment commission.

On the plus side, however, the court did agree to award a temporary restraining order which will stop Apple from ending developer accounts of Epic Games, and in addition, will also present Apple from restricting the use of Unreal Engine by game developers which will at least be some temporary good news for Microsoft.

What Do We Think?

Firstly, we should highlight that this was only a temporary restraining order and while it will be good news for those currently working on Unreal Engine games for the IOS platform, it could ultimately only end up representing a stay of execution. Additionally though, on the whole, it seems that the court wasn’t overly convinced by many aspects of Epic Games’ initial arguments. Admittedly, their main aim was never the “irreparable harm” angle and they are keener to nail Apple down for Monopolizing with their store and, by proxy, financial transactions.

In a nutshell though, unless an agreement is reached, this will drag on for a very long time and, ultimately, we suspect that only the lawyers are going to end up being the winners here!

What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!