The ongoing legal battle between Epic Games and Apple reached another decision in U.S. court today after a judge ordered Apple to stop enforcing its App Store commission.
U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ordered Apple to cease applying its 27 per cent commission on the App Store after the company was found to have wilfully violated a court injunction in an antitrust case filed by Fortnite maker Epic Games. The injunction in question—written by Judge Gonzalez Rogers in 2021—was intended to “restrain and prohibit the iPhone maker’s anticompetitive conduct.”
Apple recently won a ruling in the ongoing case, with a judge declining to hear appeals on the antitrust matter, leaving Epic Games to shoulder the financial burden back in 2024. At the time, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney said, “The court battle to open iOS to competing stores and payments is lost in the United States. A sad outcome for all developers.” However, Sweeney appears to have changed his tune in light of the latest ruling.
Judge Gonzalez Rogers wrote, “Apple’s continued attempts to interfere with competition will not be tolerated,” in the decision made on Wednesday. She also ordered that Apple “no longer impede developers’ ability to communicate with users, nor will they levy or impose a new commission on off-app purchases.”
Her ruling continued: “In stark contrast to Apple’s initial in-court testimony, contemporaneous business documents reveal that Apple knew exactly what it was doing and at every turn chose the most anti-competitive option,” adding an accusation that Apple’s vice-president of finance, Alex Roman, lied under oath.
In a statement to CBS, an Apple spokesperson said, “We strongly disagree with the decision. We will comply with the court’s order and we will appeal.” In contrast to his 2024 comments, Sweeney now appears open to working with Apple following the ruling.
In a press release from The Game Business following the court’s ruling, Sweeney said “We were one of Apple’s best partners for more than a decade, from the point we released Infinity Blade for iOS and did amazing Unreal Engine support, right up until we started fighting them in 2020. A good decade of awesome partnership. We hope with now the law being classified, and Apple’s legal obligations under these consumer protection laws being clear, and now with Apple being forced by the court to adhere to them, that hopefully we can put our dispute to rest.”
He continued with “I’ve been fighting Apple for a long time. But I’m an iPhone customer. This is an awesome device. I love having it. I don’t love the policies that Apple has made with respect to stores, but there’s a lot of respect of Epic towards Apple’s quality of product and focus. I hold out hope that there’s a way for Apple to get back on the right side of history here. I think this is a great time for Apple to consider doing that.”
Epic Games’ offered peace proposal says if Apple complies with the Judge’s ruling on a global scale, Epic Games will bring Fortnite back to the iOS platform, ironically, via the App Store globally as well. Epic Games would also drop all litigation against Apple (although they had lost the appeal decision back in 2024) if they complied. But it remains to be seen if they will or will not.
