Apple: Epic wants to rekindle interest in Fortnite with App Store charge

Apple says Epic’s App Store charge is “ part of a marketing campaign ” to spark interest in Fortnite. That interest would have waned last year and that is why Epic is taking the legal battle, the company claims.

Interest in Fortnite is 70 percent lower than in October last year, Apple claims in response to Epic’s indictment. Plus, Epic has little to lose with the removal of Fortnite from the App Store: Apple claims that Epic gets 10 percent of Fortnite’s revenue from iOS. Epic has repeatedly told Apple that Apple is ‘the smallest piece of the pie’ in terms of revenue. All platforms except Google’s Android have higher revenue per user than iPhones, with some platforms like Xbox and PlayStation a full 70 percent and 40 percent higher than iPhones. the iPhone. “

According to Apple, it seems that the reason for suing Apple and Google is mainly a marketing-technical reason. “This charge, and the accompanying headlines on the front page, appear to be part of a marketing campaign to spark interest in Fortnite.”

The legal battle between the two companies started when Epic introduced its own payment system in August, after which Apple removed the Fortnite game from the App Store. Google did the same in its digital app store. With its own payment system, Epic circumvented the mandatory payment of 30 percent on payments, but Apple and Google are not allowed to have their own payment system. Not everyone pays 30 percent: Amazon gives 15 percent to Apple.

Subsequently, Epic Games filed a lawsuit against both parties over the monopoly of the two companies and the restrictions of the policy on third parties. In an earlier preliminary ruling, a judge indicated that Apple may block Fortnite, but the developer account Epic owns for the Unreal engine should not be banned. This case between Apple and Epic will officially begin on September 28.