Rather, it was mostly a duopoly alongside Google.Įpic was then ruled to pay Apple $3.6 million, which is 30% of the revenue withheld from Apple in the game company’s attempts to circumvent the App Store.

Judge Rogers also ruled that wasn’t really a monopoly as Epic had alleged. That one count which was not in favour of Apple blocked Apple from preventing developers to add links within their apps to third-party forms of payments. The lawsuit dragged on for over a year until 10 September 2021, when Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers issued a ruling favouring Apple on nine out of ten counts brought against the company. This, in turn, would’ve hurt a lot of developers that relied on the engine.

Epic losing access to the engine would’ve resulted in its obsolescence on Apple devices since the company wouldn’t have been able to take care of it. This is because Epic develops and supports Unreal Engine – a 3D graphics game engine that’s the backbone of a huge catalogue of games.

Prior to the ruling, a number of companies including Microsoft had backed Epic’s requests to reverse the ban on its developer accounts. However, the same ruling ordered Apple to unblock Epic’s developer accounts, so not all was lost for the game developer. Right from the start, it appeared that Epic was not doing well in the case, with the judge ruling in Apple’s favour in keeping Fortnite off the App Store.