Epic Games isn’t done with Apple. The 2021 ruling forced Apple to allow App Store app developers to connect to external payments, and Epic has now filed a motion asking Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers to enforce her original order.
Epic says Apple’s updated developer policy, which still reserves 27 percent of external payments (or 12 percent for small developers) for Apple itself, is still unjustified. Epic claims these fees are “substantially the same” as those the company charges for using its payment system.
Christian Owens, who founded payment processor Paddle, and Benjamin Simon, founder of Down Dog fitness apps for iOS, agreed in statements also filed by Epic. Owens called the choice offered by Apple “illusory,” while Simon said his company, Yoga Buddhi Co., would still have to charge more for the iOS version than for the web version of its subscriptions.
Epic also says Apple requires developers to use a certain “Plain Button Style,” which Epic says “isn’t a button at all” and violates Apple’s ban on developers barring management — that is, directing users to alternative “payment buttons, external links or other calls to action.” He says Apple bans cross-platform apps like Minecraft from pointing out the outside payments also violates the judge’s order.
Epic spokeswoman Natalie Muñoz said The Verge in an email that Apple’s new rules prohibit “the kind of management Down Dog uses in its Android apps” — on Android, Down Dog can direct its users to its website for cheaper subscriptions.
The judge’s original injunction did not specifically mention management, so Epica’s claim seems to depend on how she interprets her own order and whether governance is implicitly included. Some close observers, at least, think Epic has a good legal case. Daniel McCuaig, a lawyer who was once part of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, said The Verge in January that Apple’s external payment terms were unsustainable and that it was “unlikely” that a court would “ultimately bless” the 27 percent fee.