Apple says its entire App Store will be put at risk if Epic Games is allowed to maintain in-store operations amid a controversial legal battle over its rules.
In its first court versions, it responds to Epic’s anti-trust lawsuit, in which the maker of the popular game is Fortnite Challenging the 30 percent commission that Apple takes on all app purchases, Apple called Epic’s legal argument deprived of “factual, financial and legal support”.
Epic sued Apple on August 13th Fortnite was kicked out of the App Store for overturning Apple’s payment mechanism. Apple has also threatened to stop supporting Epic’s Unreal Engine, a graphics platform used by millions of third-party developers.
Epic had asked for an order that would block Apple from acting on this threat, but Apple said on Friday that such information “would threaten the entire App Store ecosystem”.
It would “flood a flood of additional requests for ’emergency’ relief and threaten the entire App Store ecosystem if developers see that they could break their agreements, jeopardize the security of the App Store, and embrace payments to Apple. , all without consequence “, Apple claimed in the submission.
The App Store is the core of Apple’s “services” device, a $ 50 billion-a-year division that is second only to the iPhone in terms of revenue and that grew at 15 percent, year- on-year, in the second quarter.
Apple said its terms and conditions were “explicitly spelled” that would not tolerate violations of its App Store rules. “Developers working to deceive Apple, as Epic has done here, have quit,” it said.
Although Epic has claimed that it will suffer “irreparable damage” if it does not have access to developer tools that Apple has, the iPhone maker said that the alleged damage that Epic is experiencing “could disappear tomorrow if Epic heals its intrusion”.
In a separate statement submitted to the court on Friday, Phil Schiller, head of the App Store, said that Epic only initiated its lawsuit after Apple rejected a request that it grant “special” exemptions – a controversy surrounding Epic’s claim to to fight a battle of principles on behalf of all developers.
Mr Schiller said that on June 30, Epic asked if it could offer an Epic Games Store app so users could install Epic apps directly without going through the App Store or Apple’s payment mechanism. Apple refused, and responded by saying that it “never allowed this”.
