After a long and public disagreement between Fortnite creators Epic Games and Apple, both parties will finally be going to court.
Epic Games originally filed a lawsuit at Apple when their popular video game Fortnite was removed from the App Store for apparent violations of Apple's payment rules.
Epic Games' reasoning behind their lawsuit is "end Apple’s unfair and anti-competitive actions that Apple undertakes to unlawfully maintain its monopoly in two distinct, multibillion dollar markets: (i) the iOS App Distribution Market, and (ii) the iOS In-App Payment Processing Market." It also followed with a lawsuit against Google for similar reasons.
On Thursday, August 13, Epic Games introduced its own direct, in-app payment system for Fortnite across all platforms. Epic Games were offering players a 20% discount when buying currency in-game, now on consoles and PC this isn't an issue but when it comes to iOS and handheld it has become a problem.
Both Apple's App Store and the Google Play Store collect a 30% fee from in-game purchases on their platforms. By players purchasing coins directly from Epic Games, this is bypassing Apple and Google and does not allow each company to get their share of the profit.
In response to this, Apple and Google both removed Fortnite from their respective stores.
A judge has finally set a trial date of the 3rd of May 2021 in which there will be no jury sitting.
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