Apple must give Epic access to development accounts but can ban Fortnite
Apple must continue to give Epic Games access to its development accounts because the impact on the Unreal Engine and its users would be too great, the US judge has ruled in a preliminary injunction. Banning Fortnite from the App Store does not cause irreparable damage.
If Apple Epics were to block access to the Apple SDK and other development tools for iOS and macOS, as the company has threatened, other parties would be affected and that would go too far, is the judgment of the judge in the preliminary injunction where Epic asked for. “Epic Games and Apple are free to sue each other, but their dispute should not wreak havoc on bystanders,” said the judge in the temporary decision, which publishes Apple Insider, among others.
The judge finds that the license to access Apple’s development tools for the Unreal Engine belongs to Epic International and that that agreement has not been violated. Regardless of the outcome of the ultimate legal conflict, third-party developer projects will be compromised if support for the Unreal Engine ends, the reasoning goes. Apple argued that Epic could take advantage of holding multiple development accounts.
The judge rejected Epic’s request to reinstate Fortnite in the App Store. Epic has not shown that it would suffer irreparable damage and the judge considered that Epic itself is responsible for the situation it ended up in. In addition, the judge points out that Epic Games itself has admitted that the problem can be solved by reversing the update for its own in-app payment system in Fortnite.
This is a temporary decision that Epic urgently requested because Apple has threatened to block its development status on Friday, August 28. The case between Epic and Apple will be brought to the preliminary relief judge on September 28, where both parties can present their arguments in more detail. Regarding the merits, Epic would have said that the four to six months needs to prepare, while Apple thinks it will take six to eight months.