It’s barely been a month since Apple and Epic Games seemingly buried the hatchet over and the fruit company has gone on the offensive again. The company from Cupertino announced that it has terminated the developer account of the Unreal Engine owner on iOS, rendering it unable to develop any games for the mobile platform.
In its official blog post, Epic Games shared the letter by Apple’s lawyers, calling it “verifiably untrustworthy” and saying that it does not believe that Epic will even comply with any of its contractual commitments, as per the fruit brand’s developer agreement.
Apple has terminated our developer account and now we cannot develop the Epic Games Store for iOS.
This is a serious violation of the EU’s Digital Markets Act. We will continue to fight to get back on iOS!https://t.co/BmqFxG26ul
— Epic Games Newsroom (@EpicNewsroom) March 6, 2024
To recap, Apple’s actions come after it said it would allow 3rd party app stores on iOS, but only in the EU, as part of the bloc’s new Digital Markets Act regulation. In conjunction with the news, Epic Games speedily announced that it planned on launching its own game store on the mobile platform, as well as relaunching Fortnite after it was removed from it back in 2020.
“Apple also claims that Epic is a threat to their ecosystem, but this is an entirely unjustified excuse to terminate one of our accounts. Apple has been a long-time public supporter of Unreal Engine. We also have had ongoing contractual relationships with Apple going back to 2010 for Epic’s games, Unreal Engine, and our other creator tools.”
Apple's plan to thwart Europe's new Digital Markets Act law is a devious new instance of Malicious Compliance.
They are forcing developers to choose between App Store exclusivity and the store terms, which will be illegal under DMA, or accept a new also-illegal anticompetitive…
— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) January 25, 2024
Despite the termination of its developer’s account, Epic Games CEO, Tim Sweeney, think still that his company has a chance of launching its own app store on iOS. This is despite the fact that Sweeney has been outspokenly critical about the way the iPhone maker’s changes to its App store as a “new instance of Malicious Compliance” and “hot garbage”, which is also in reference to what he says is Apple forcing developers to choose between App Store exclusivity and its Store terms.
(Source: Epic Games, The Verge)
