Nuked The lawsuit is shedding new light on how the companies came into conflict. It’s been just over a week since Fortnite developer Epic Games initiated an unprecedented antitrust legal fight with Apple over its app store rules.
Ceo Tim Sweeney asked top Apple executives to exempt Fortnite from its standard 30 percent cut and to allow epic to offer its own mobile app store.
The emails show extensive discussions between Sweeney and Apple before epic took action to incorporate an alternate payment mechanism into the Fortnite app. Sweeney was effectively asking if Apple would restructure the app store and iOS as we know it.
‘we hope that Apple will also make these options equally available to all iOS developers in order to make software sales and distribution on the iOS platform as open and competitive as it is on personal computers’.
An email from Sweeney sent at 5:08am et on August 13th – the day of the eventual removal of Fortnite from the app store. The epic chief executive tells Apple CEO Tim Cook and fellow executives Phil Schiller, Craig Federighi, and Matt Fischer that epic will’no longer adhere to Apple’s payment processing restrictions’.
Sweeney warns Apple of the forthcoming legal battle. He says he will be in conflict with Apple for so long as it takes to bring about change, if necessary for many years.
Read the full back-and-forth between Apple and epic below. Read out the full back and-and-forth between Apple, epic.
