Well this thing has gotten even more dumb now. Apple responded and told Epic that they’ve been banned from the appstore for a list of reasons specified in the contracts and license agreements entered into. Giving Epic a generous 14 days to remedy a list of issues to avoid being terminated. The whole IAP thing being the first obvious one but they also obfuscated and lied to apple about what the update they wanted to push did and contained so that’s a big breach of trust and contract. Apple decided that not only do they not want fortnite anymore, they don’t want to work with Epic anymore. Canceling their license and access to Apple devtools and support entirely. This will pretty much mean the unreal engine wont be supported on iOS or any other Apple system for that matter. Well Epic COULD still try very hard to maintain compatibility without any of the dev tools or early access to new OS versions or documentation, the engine would always be a step behind everything else though and it’d require a lot of software engineering skills on their part. Possible, but expensive. Good luck epic.
Well here comes the stupidity, Epic’s response. They’ve gone and tried to sue for an injunction against Apple demanding that the court forces Apple to not only restore Epic’s access to the appstore with fortnite’s update as is, force Apple to continue licensing them dev tools, provide support and all other benefits they’ve enjoyed through this contract and relationship they’ve decided to break. Because “we’re certain we’ll win this anyway and if we get punished by Apple like this it’ll cause us ‘irreparable harm’”. Of course there’s a LOT of flowery BS going on where they try to paint Apple as some sort of abuser here and talking at length about how access to cellphones, no iPhones in particular, is an “Essential Facility” and that’s why they have to allow Fortnite and in extension pretty much any other software on their system. Also of course this means that anyone should be able to own an iPhone and we need to institute government programs to help those who can’t afford an iPhone or iPad to do so. Not just any cellphone, which kind of exists already, their argument fails if they don’t mean iPhones in particular. It still fails because it’s stupid though.
They even went and trawled facebook posts for people expressing annoyance over not having fortnite on their phone anymore and included screenshots of those in a legal document, as if that proved anything. Epic is really taking this to a twitter feud level of discourse.
The short of it is pretty much that Epic want the court to deny Apple the rights they have to decide who they do business with, who they enter into contracts with.