Shortly after the appeals court judges ruled against Apple’s contempt appeal in its years-long antitrust dispute against the manufacturers fortnite, I had the chance to talk to Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, in an interview. According to Sweeney, today’s decision “completely shuts down” Apple’s App Store rules that allow it to collect “junk fees.”
The three-judge Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel largely affirmed an April ruling that Apple failed to comply with Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers’ 2021 order allowing app developers to link to external payment options, which Sweeney said is “…really awesome for all developers.”
Perhaps the most notable part of the appeals court’s decision is that the panel is asking Gonzalez Rogers to look into ways Apple can charge developers fair fees for purchases made in apps using external payment links. In his April decision, Gonzalez Rogers blocked Apple from taking Any Due to decisions like imposing a 27 percent fee on external payments and forcing developers to make their payment links in plain text.
But the appeals court says Apple should be able to charge fees based on “costs that are actually and reasonably required to coordinate external links for link-out purchases, but no more” and that Apple is “entitled to some compensation for the use of its intellectual property that is used directly in allowing Epic and others to complete link-out purchases.”
“If you want an app to go through review with a custom linkout, there might be a fee of several hundred dollars attached to it every time you submit an app, which is totally reasonable because there are real people at Apple doing these things and Apple pays them, and we should contribute to that,” Sweeney says. But he says the decision, “I think completely shuts down Apple’s principle that they should be able to charge arbitrary junk fees for access.”
As for these two areas for which Apple would be allowed to charge, Sweeney says that “I can’t imagine any justification for assessing a percentage of developer revenue here.”
A few weeks after the April decision, Fortnite Returned to the US App Store – nearly five years after Apple originally shut it down – when Epic introduced its own in-app purchase system. Fortnite. And like the Digital Markets Act in Europe, there are efforts being made globally to require Apple to allow third-party app stores on iOS, which is why you can get Fortnite Mobile from the Epic Games Store in that region.
“Until now, Apple has adopted a strategy of collecting junk fees and fees every region until forced to stop by law enforcers or regulators,” Sweeney says. “I’m not sure if they’re going to keep this up until they lose every single battle in the entire world, or if they’re going to harmonize their global policies at some point. I certainly hope that Apple, at some point, will just try to come to a soft landing and create a single worldwide policy that will work for everyone.”
Sweeney expects the Ninth Circuit’s opinion to open up “a lot” of regulatory efforts around the world. “Why would any self-respecting country in the world allow Apple to charge fees that a United States court has found illegal in the United States?” He says.
This decision wasn’t the only big news for Epic Fortnite Today on mobile: The game is also back on Google Play in the US after being bootlegged by Google over Epic adding an in-app payment system. FortniteEpic and Google announced last month that they had agreed to settle their lawsuit, and while both parties are still seeking court approval for their settlement, it resolves their disputes worldwide,
“I’m very impressed by the new generation of Android leadership,” says Sweeney. “They turned over a new leaf here.”
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