I'd take that bet. I think Epic (Tim Sweeney, really) was prepared to lose that revenue to win the war.

This ruling is what I expected and seems quite reasonable. Epic doesn't get temporary special privileges to break App Store rules (even though they are alleged to be illegal), but also Apple can't retaliate against them in other areas.

If Epic does reverse the payment changes in an attempt to return Fortnite to the App Store until the lawsuit is resolved, I doubt Apple will let them back in unless forced by the court (despite Tim Cook's "Sir, we do not retaliate or bully people").

People seem to act like this is the first App Store dispute.

There have been many over the last decade and Apple's behaviour has been consistent i.e. they will simply allow Epic to come back onto the store and pretend like nothing ever happened. Exactly like we saw recently with the Hey app.

Apple doesn't want to punish developers but they will play hard ball if they don't abide by the rules.

This appears to be the first dispute where Apple aggressively retaliated in unrelated areas of business.

> This appears to be the first dispute where Apple aggressively retaliated in unrelated areas of business.

But it's also the first publish dispute where someone purposely put in code to activate alternative payment options and broke the rules. Apple is setting an example of epic. Don't break the rules.

No it's not https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/21/netflix-itunes-2/

Yes it is, Netflix didn't hide code and then later enable it to support another payment option inside their app. They tried to redirect users to a website when signing up for premium.

What Epic did was hide code and later enable the feature.

Netflix hid code and later enabled it to redirect users to a non-Apple payment method. Epic hid code and later enabled it to redirect users to a non-Apple payment method. They did the exact same thing.

Have you got citation? I cannot find anything on google about Netflix hiding and enabling code. The only thing your link states is once the subscription ends the user is redirected to the browser to pay, so, not the same time.

I don’t think Epic is making that much money from Fortnite on iOS to actually care, I think they are using Apple because a) its an easy target and if they win the ruling can be expanded to other platforms too where they currently make the most money on and b) while they aren’t a major source of revenue now Epic probably has bigger plans for mobile centric games down the line.

Basically now it’s the best time for them to do it, Apple is a huge target and they can gain industry support, Fortnite is big enough that even the average judge, jurist and jury member is likely aware of it and right now they stand to lose very little financially from not being on iOS while the potential future gains are insane.

It's possible that revenue has fallen off, but it appears that Fortnite Mobile revenue has been at least $500 million per year. If this trial goes on for two years, that's potentially a billion dollars in lost revenue. https://sensortower.com/blog/fortnite-mobile-revenue-1-billi...

Epic makes over $5B/year — and more than $680 million of that is from the Epic Game Store [1], which has always been banned from iOS due to Apple's policies against alternative stores. Fortnite Mobile makes them good money, but it's not their cash cow — and if they can trade a temporary ban on Fortnite for their store running on iOS, it seems like they'll take it.

1: https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattperez/2020/01/14/epic-games...

Those estimates are utterly out of touch with reality to the point of being a straight fabrication.

Fortnite brought Epic £1.8b in revenue for 2019, there is no way that 25% of that came from iOS based on actual player data and experience, if their iOS revenue is 10% of the total I will be in shock.

The US is disproportionately iOS compared to the entire world, and especially US teens (I've seen estimates of something like 90%). iOS, the US, and US teens are all disproportionately important to digital sales. Although the US is 10% of TikTok's user base, it provides 50% of TikTok's revenue, nd from Charli D'Amelio on down the most-followed TikTok accounts are almost entirely American. That's why everyone expects TikTok's US (and possibly global) operations to be soon sold; the US is the tail that wags the dog.

US is the majority of revenue sure, but there is no way that so much comes from iOS the cross platform play numbers don’t back this up you can’t just extrapolate from hypothetical app download figures.

The US is about 80% of Fortnite’s but the majority of the players are on consoles not mobile. The 80% figure will change drastically when China grants epic permission to monetize the game as the vast majority of their players are in China.

I also imagine Epic made these kinds of calculations before trying to take on Apple.

Assuming they introduce the epic store and cut fees from 30% to 0% fees. It would take 6 years to pay the lost revenue back. It's entirely possible that the next hot thing will come out in 6 years and replace Fortnite.

> I don’t think Epic is making that much money from Fortnite on iOS to actually care

IIRC they said 11% during the hearing, I don't remember if that was 11% of Fortnite revenue or total revenue, and I don't remember if that might have included android as well.

This makes more sense and closer to the figure i kinda pulled out of thin air just based on the size of the playerbase, the 500M> figure was way too much considering that Fortnite only generates about 1.8b a year and it's revenue is going down.

Android is likely a much much smaller to the point of being a rounding error for Epic right now, there aren't many devices that can play the game right and in the markets that they actually get revenue from they aren't that popular.

I don't think Epic has any other games on the App Store tbh, and they probably didn't include licensing revenue.