May 1 2025, 07:56 PM, updated 8 months ago
Epic Games v. Apple judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers just ruled that, effective immediately, Apple is no longer allowed to collect fees on purchases made outside apps and blocks the company from restricting how developers can point users to where they can make purchases outside of apps. Apple says it will appeal the order.
The ruling was issued as part of Epic Games’ ongoing legal dispute against Apple, and it’s a major victory for Epic’s arguments. Gonzalez Rogers also says that Apple “willfully” chose not to comply with her previous injunction from her original 2021 ruling. “That [Apple] thought this Court would tolerate such insubordination was a gross miscalculation,” Gonzalez Rogers says.
The judge also referred the case to the US attorney to review it for possible criminal contempt proceedings.
As part of the ruling, the judge says that Apple cannot:
Impose “any commission or any fee on purchases that consumers make outside an app”
Restrict developers’ style, formatting, or placement of links for purchases outside of an app
Block or limit the “use of buttons or other calls to action”
Interfere with consumers’ choice to leave an app with anything beyond “a neutral message apprising users that they are going to a third-party site”
Apple’s senior director of corporate communications, Olivia Dalton, sent a statement to The Verge that reads, “We strongly disagree with the decision. We will comply with the court’s order and we will appeal.”
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney says that, following this ruling, the company will bring Fortnite back to the US App Store “next week.” Sweeney is also offering a “peace proposal” from Epic: “If Apple extends the court’s friction-free, Apple-tax-free framework worldwide, we’ll return Fortnite to the App Store worldwide and drop current and future litigation on the topic.”
In many cases, Apple takes a 30 percent cut of purchases made in its apps, and Gonzalez Rogers’ 2021 ruling forced Apple to allow developers to point to alternative payment options. But Apple instituted a policy that demanded developers pay Apple a 27 percent commission on those purchases, which many companies, including Epic, were unhappy about.
“In the end, Apple sought to maintain a revenue stream worth billions in direct defiance of this Court’s Injunction,” Gonzalez Rogers says. She notes that, inside Apple, App Store chief Phil Schiller advocated for the company to comply with the injunction, but that CEO Tim Cook “chose poorly” by ignoring Schiller and letting CFO Luca Maestri “convince him otherwise.”
Spotify: “This landmark court ruling is a victory for developers everywhere.”
“Spotify will move quickly to submit an app update to Apple, enhancing the experience for our consumers across the United States,” spokesperson Jeanne Moran tells The Verge following today’s major ruling in Epic Games v. Apple.
Apple exec ‘outright lied’ during Epic trial
In her ruling banning Apple from charging a commission on purchases made outside the App Store, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers says that an Apple executive “outright lied under oath.”
According to Gonzalez Rogers, Alex Roman, vice president of finance at Apple, gave testimony that was “replete with misdirection and outright lies.” The judge writes that Roman lied when testifying that Apple hadn’t decided on the 27 percent number for its fee on purchases outside the App Store until January 16th, 2024.
“Contemporaneous business documents reveal that on the contrary, the main components of Apple’s plan, including the 27 percent commission, were determined in July 2023,” Gonzalez Rogers says. “Neither Apple, nor its counsel, corrected the, now obvious, lies.”
Related
Gonzalez Rogers says that she is referring the case to a US attorney for possible criminal contempt proceedings against Apple and Roman.
“Apple willfully chose not to comply with this Court’s Injunction,” Gonzalez Rogers says at the end of the filing (emphasis hers). “It did so with the express intent to create new anticompetitive barriers which would, by design and in effect, maintain a valued revenue stream; a revenue stream previously found to be anticompetitive. That it thought this Court would tolerate such insubordination was a gross miscalculation. As always, the cover-up made it worse. For this Court, there is no second bite at the apple.”
https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/29/22410877...al-lawsuit-news
Apple kalah lawsuit, must allow external payments, danke epic games
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