Epic asks court to stop Apple’s ‘retaliation’ and allow to restore Fortnite in the App Store

Epic Games said late on Friday that it filed a motion to request an injunction that seeks to restore Fortnite in the App Store. The company said “Today we asked the Court to stop Apple’s retaliation against Epic for daring to challenge its unlawful restrictions while our antitrust case proceeds. This is a necessary step to free consumers and developers from Apple’s costly, anti-competitive control.“

In the preliminary statement, Epic accused Apple of being monopolist and using that power to prohibit any competitive entry. “…, accused of antitrust violations for misusing its power to create and maintain two monopolies, Apple used that same power to try to coerce Epic to abide by its unlawful restrictions. The Court should not allow Apple to enforce these restrictions.”

Last week, Apple officially terminated Epic’s App Store account following a legal battle with the game studio over violating App Store guidelines after the developer started using its own direct payment system. Apple said the termination will not affect Unreal Engine. A federal judge ordered Apple to not shut down Epic’s Unreal Engine which is used by thousands of other game developers. However the termination prevents users from being able to download Fortnite or other Epic titles through the App Store. Epic was restricted to submit new games or updates to the App Store from the termination day forth. 

Apple said it would allow Fortnite back to the App Store if Epic Games removes the direct payments feature but Epic refused to do so. 

“This was a clear warning to any other developer that would dare challenge Apple’s monopolies: follow our rules or we will cut you off from a billion iOS consumers—challenge us and we will destroy your business.”