An Epic Game
Apple finally read the room. The courtroom, at least. Here's Chance Miller with 9to5Mac:
After a nearly five-year hiatus, Fortnite is back on the App Store for iPhone and iPad users in the United States. Epic Games announced the return of the battle royale gaming app this afternoon, and you can head to the App Store now to download it.
Fortnite is also back in the Epic Games Store and AltStore in the European Union.
It is both wild that it has been nearly five years since Fortnite left the App Store – but far more wild that Epic has kept up the battle this long, despite what must be billions in lost revenue.1 It's easy to get lost in the day-to-day of this back-and-forth, but just take a step back: Fortnite is one of the, if not the, biggest games of the world. And it wasn't on the largest platform for half a decade.
And now it's back. I would argue – as I have been for the past five years – that it's the direct result of a calculated long-game maneuver by Tim Sweeney. Per above, it could not have been worth it, monetarily, obviously. Even with the ability to accept payments on the web, saving Epic from Apple's 30% cut,2 it will take years to earn back that lost revenue – if they ever do, because you have to assume most customers will still choose to use Apple's in-app payment mechanisms!
That's one of the silliest things about all of this. Had Apple just agreed to compete for the customer's wallet here, they undoubtedly would have won most of the time – yes, even with the 30% cut. Because convenience often trumps cost, and Apple's system is seamless and very well done!
But we've been over all of that, again over the past many years. Apple has now changed their ways only because they were forced to. The question now is if any of this will stand, long term. Apple is, of course, appealing the Judge's ruling. If they win, do they dare pull all of this back? We already have some of the biggest companies and apps now taking advantage of the web payments, from Amazon to Spotify. What do they do if Apple wins and puts the genie back in the bottle? Just quietly comply and pull back their web payment links?3 Spotify?!
And if they get loud again, what do consumers do? The answer there is still probably nothing. Their only real option is to move to Android or to Europe – I'm not sure which is easier. But Google is working like hell to make the former much compelling by the day thanks to their prowess in a space where Apple has a distinct weakness: AI. We'll see.
To go back to Sweeney, this is now the second time he's called Apple's bluff – and won. That's rather incredible. And it was nearly the same situation. Last March, Apple had to backtrack from revoking Epic's EU developer license in the face of threats from the EU. There, as here, Apple probably had good legal footing for their move since Epic did violate their rules to get banned in the first place. But that's not the battle Apple was actually fighting. This was a PR war being waged by Sweeney, and he was slowly but surely winning it.
Now he's doing so less slowly but more surely. As I wrote last weekend, thinking through Sweeney's strategy here:
If I'm him, here's the general game plan:
1) Re-submit Fortnite to the US App Store even though you have no legal grounds to do so. No one will care about that. They will have just read about your legal win and assume you won everything and so Fortnite can return – even though this particular aspect of the case had nothing to do with that.
2) When Apple rejects (or refuses to rule) on the new submission, pull your app around the world under the notion that the unified apps all have to be updated in unison, including an element bringing the US back to the App Store. So yeah, blame Apple for this. It may even technically be true, but it doesn't matter. Again, it's a perception thing.
3) File a new legal claim against Apple for blocking your submission in light of the recent ruling. Again, this has no legal grounds, but perhaps the Judge who issued that ruling is, in fact, pissed off enough to entertain this in some way – even if just in weighing in on it to dismiss it sympathetically, thus generating more press, instead of immediately dismissing it, legally.
4) Give more interviews about all of the above in the coming weeks. Again, leading up to WWDC. Keep the pressure on.
If I'm right, step three may happen this week, and step four certainly will. And don't be shocked if politicians get involved even though, once again, Apple is on strong legal footing in this particular matter. That hardly matters when there are headlines to be made. And Sweeney is great at winning the headlines battle, even if he's not particularly good at winning the legal ones. Because that was never the point, per Jack Ryan.
Step 3 happened on Monday, with the Judge threatening to make everyone come back to court so Apple could defend their stonewalling of Epic. Sweeney went back on the offensive and by Tuesday, Apple caved.
As far as I know, Apple hasn't yet weighed in on the matter publicly – and I suspect they won't – but they did legally, per John Yoon at The New York Times:
On Monday, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers called on Apple to reinstate Fortnite to the App Store or return to court to prove it had a legal basis for not doing so. The next day, Fortnite was back on iPhones and iPads in the United States, and Epic and Apple signed a joint statement to the court saying they had resolved that particular dispute.
Next question: if Apple wins their appeal, do they re-ban Fortnite by revoking Epic's developer credentials? If nothing else, there's seemingly no way they can do that now. I suspect they'd let Fortnite remain so long as they comply with the guidelines – including paying Apple 27% of any revenue from transactions started in-app. Epic, of course, would never agree to that. So either they remove the web links or pull the app themselves this time. Round and round we go.
Can you imagine the backlash against Apple if it plays out that way? It's just an untenable situation for them. So maybe the reinstatement (and joint statement) is an acknowledgement of that. A reading of the room, beyond the courtroom.
Maybe. Shall we play a game?
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
1 Sure, some of it might be indirect -- i.e. beyond the direct revenue lost from iOS players, there's also revenue Fortnite would have made if friends could play with other friends who have iOS devices, but because they couldn't...
2 They'll have their own fees to pay, of course – notably, card processing fees, but those are more like 3%-4%.
3 Because there's no way they're going to be okay with Apple's silly "27%" cut, which equated to more than 30% when you layer in doing your own credit card processing.