- Apple’s Tim Cook and Tim Sweeney of Epic Games will testify in the Fortnite case.
- This is the latest in a series of lawsuits that Epic Games has filed against Apple.
- The court case will tentatively begin on May 3.
- See more stories on Insider’s business page.
Apple Inc and
Epic Games
court documents show they called their CEOs to testify as part of the upcoming “Fortnite” App Store trial.
Apple CEO Tim Cook, SVP Craig Federighi, and former App Store chief marketing officer Matt Fischer are on the list of preliminary witnesses to testify live and face-to-face in the courtroom.
Epic Games presented its founder and CEO, Tim Sweeney, store manager Steve Allison, and head of online business strategy Thomas Ko, as witnesses for the trial.
Reuters reported that Epic Games said: “The chorus of developers speaking out against Apple and their antitrust competition has intensified.”
Apple responded in a statement to Bloomberg, saying they were “confident that the case will prove that Epic deliberately broke its agreement to increase its revenue.”
The battle began after Apple and Google’s rules were circumvented by Epic Games over in-app payments made by their App Stores.
Developers are required to pay Apple and Google a 30% commission on all payments made within their applications. Epic Games claims to be competitive.
Epic Games then implemented its own payment system in ‘Fortnite’, which led to Apple’s App Store and Google Play Store being kicked off, as Insider reported earlier.
The Apple court case is set to begin on May 3, and Cook is due to make a 7-hour deposit.
Apple says its top executives “look forward to sharing with the court the very positive impact the App Store has had on innovation, economies around the world and the customer experience over the past twelve years”, as reported by The Verge.