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Epic judge permanently restrains Apple from blocking Unreal Engine, but won’t force Fortnite
The decision makes permanent the temporary restraining order ruling from last month.
www.theverge.com
UE4 devs for iOS can rejoice. Restrain me if old.
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Epic Games vs. Apple: Judge has permanently restrained Apple from blocking Unreal Engine, but won’t force to reinstate Fortnite
- Thread starter delete12345
- Start date
- News
www.theverge.com
UE4 devs for iOS can rejoice. Restrain me if old.
Jeez , blocking Unreal Engine games would've hurt soooooooo many other devs other than Epic . Glad they decided against that .
So devs get access to Unreal and everyone loses access to Fortnite on iOS?
2020 gives good news after all.
2020 gives good news after all.
I wonder how Sweeney is reacting to the news. I feel like I haven't seen him Tweet in awhile about this.
as someone who actually enjoys fortnite, and plays it regularly on ipad, this is all supremely obnoxious haha
Because losing access to a game people might have put money into is always good news.
They lost the appeal, can they appeal again? I'm not knowledgeable of US law.
Interesting choice about not having a jury. I guess Epic feels safe enough with just a judge deciding?
They had the opportunity to do that. Apple warned them, and gave them the window in which they needed to make the change by. Epic didn't cure within that window, presumably because they thought the courts would rule in their favour. Then Apple, with warning, deleted their developer account that Fortnite was published under. Technically, Epic can now never reclaim that version of Fortnite, so even if they get a new developer account, they can't update the binary that current iOS players have installed (though they may be able to transition player progress via whatever Epic have on the backend). Apple has said that Epic can't Apple for a new developer account for another year (under which they could then publish a new binary of Fortnite), and I'm not sure Apple is obliged to grant them a new one even if they did.
It would be possible for Epic to publish a new version of Fortnite under the developer account that currently has for access to Unreal tools (which existing players would have to download and install), but that would likely be a very risky move given if they pulled any shenanigans again they might lose that account too given the judge has ruled in Apple's favour here.
Looks like Epic was making between about US$500-750k per day on mobile before it got pulled down. Expensive gamble ultimately.
Edit: worth noting Apple never threatened to remove games based on Unreal from the App Store but to delete Epic's Unreal developer account. This means they wouldn't have access to Apple tech and tools and Unreal for iOS would atrophy over time, with the engine becoming increasingly incompatible and games being likely unable to be updated at some point in time. It would have been a slow death for existing games based on Unreal.
Roughly US$500-750k per day across both the App Store and Google Play, with about 80-90% of that being on the App Store.
Do you have a link to the source? Not doubting, just assume that it has more information and potentially a breakdown of other platforms which would be interesting.
So that's about 4-5% of their revenue. It's not nothing obviously, but it's not astronomical either.
The app still functions on existing installs, right? I don't think their revenue from iOS has dropped to zero has it?
Fair ruling. As a long play it might be worth it. At this point Apple is highly likely to lose their closed software ecosystem within the next couple years, maybe not immediately in the US but certainly elsewhere. Their blatant retaliation being shot down isn't going to help them.
In the mean time, I bet Epic can work something out with Gamepass or Luna to get it back on with streaming if not do it themselves.
In the mean time, I bet Epic can work something out with Gamepass or Luna to get it back on with streaming if not do it themselves.
Hey, it's Epic's own fault. Play with fire, get burned. They reaped what they sowed.
Apple removing the app and developer account completely means that payments can no longer be processed through the App Store. Presumably payments could still go through the "Epic payment" part. But that's assuming the app even runs given it doesn't have the latest content that they are running across all other platforms.
So, possible they are making some percentage of what they were making before still. But even assuming the last available build of the iOS app even runs, they'd be losing the ability to bring in new players via new installs, be missing payments from users that can't or won't use the Epic payment system, wouldn't be able to sell existing players new content, and have lost players that churned out because they were bored of the game or switched to another platform to access the latest content and events. They'd have to be making a fraction of what they were before.
Right, I just meant that their revenue won't have disappeared completely, I agree it will have significantly dropped.
Should be easy to check. Does anybody reading the thread have the iOS version still installed? Does it boot? Does the ingame store load?
