In a new legal submission, Epic Games claims that Apple is threatening its entire ecosystem with its coercive behavior. And it has the support of Microsoft.
The new submission is just the latest development in the rapidly escalating saga of Epic v. Apple, in which the former company claims that Apple abuses its dominant position on mobile and behaves in an anti-competitive manner. Apple, in turn, has attacked Epic for violating the terms of its developer contract and is threatening to pull Epic and its Unreal Engine out of its App Store, a move that would harm many, many game developers.
“Over the past week, several Unreal Engine licensors have contacted Epic and expressed serious concerns about Apple’s actions and their impact on their iOS and macOS-related projects,” the legal filing notes. “Epic hereby submits … a statement from the General Manager of Gaming Experience at Microsoft addressing this issue.”
“Kevin Gammill, Microsoft’s general manager of gaming developers ‘experiences, attests that’ there are very few other options available to makers ‘that offer as many features and as much functionality as Unreal Engine across multiple platforms, including iOS’ and that Apple’s inclusion of developer tools ‘will put Unreal Engine’ and games that use it ‘at a substantial disadvantage,’ the submission notes state.
“Mr. Gammill also states that ‘Unreal Engine’s sudden loss of support for iOS and macOS would make significant costs and difficult decisions’ for game makers, who’ would have significant sunken costs and lost time using Unreal Engine for game creation, and would have to choose between (a) starting the whole development with a new game engine, (b) leaving the iOS and macOS platforms, or (c) stopping the development altogether ‘. ”
Microsoft obviously has its own problems with Apple and its unfair license policy of the App Store. The software giant will soon launch an Xbox Game Pass streaming app on Android, but it is unable to do so because Apple’s rules prohibit any game app from offering multiple titles, like Microsoft’s. Apple says it should investigate every game that the app offers to protect its users from abuse, while Microsoft says there are already rating boards that provide this service in the gaming industry.
Access with App Store, Epic Games
