In a wide interview with CNN Business, Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, says that his company has been preparing for months against the lawsuit against Apple, which has the code name “Project Liberty” internally.
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Epic launched an overall assault on Apple after Fortnite was removed from the App Store in August after the app implemented a direct payment method for in-app purchases. According to the App Store policy, all apps must use its own system for in-app purchases, which gives Apple 30% commission on all purchases made. Epic’s refusal to comply with the policy led to the app being kicked off the platform.
Sweeney says in his interview that Epic spent ‘months’ developing and preparing its lawsuit against Apple, which was launched in particular and announced within hours of Fortnite being removed from the App Store..
Internally, Epic calls the lawsuit ‘Project Liberty’, which gives the idea that the lawsuit is intended to further open Apple’s platforms to smaller developers, and consequently ‘freedom’. Despite the focus of the lawsuit on the App Store’s 30% commission policy, Sweeney says it actually boils down to the idea that he believes open platforms are ‘the key to free markets and the future of computers’.
Developers are questioning whether the 30% commission is a fair price for developers to repay to Apple, given, for example, that ‘Epic Games’ earned $ 1.3 billion from Fortnite in-game purchases in 2020.
Epic Games had a valuation of $ 17.3 billion at the end of last year, and on the financial front Sweeney says that Epic has ‘the financial independence’ to pursue its case against Apple and Google, mainly due to the fact that Epic Games not a listed company.
When Sweeney was asked for details on how much Epic’s lawsuit against Apple cost, he declined to answer, saying he only takes a lot of time from the company’s leadership. However, it’s clear that millions of Apple users are unable to play Fortnite on their devices, that the business is likely to experience a financial battle as iOS users have generated more than $ 1.2 billion in Epic revenue since launching it on the platform introduced, according to Sensor. Tower data quoted by CNN Business.
All in all, however, Sweeney says the battle is worth it for fear that the future of platforms like the App Store will be completely dominated by platform owners like Apple, and that there are no other developers on it.
“[The companies] will only operate the industry by industry sector and app category by app category until they have devoured everything that matters. And who will be left? “A million indie developers collectively make up a small percentage of the app store because these businesses are too small to be attractive to steal,” Sweeney said.
Finally, Sweeney deals with controversial comments he made in November in which he states that the fight for civil rights and Epic’s fight for platform ‘freedom’ are similar. The remarks caused a great deal of controversy, and in response Sweeney said he believed it was entirely healthy to draw similarities between ‘vital causes in the history of the world’ and the battle on app platforms.
“The point is, if you really want to make a difference, you have to bend the system,” Sweeney said in response to the criticism. “I think there is a lot we can learn from any struggle in humanity in the past, and I think it is perfectly healthy to apply struggle of vital causes in the history of the world to struggle over smaller problems like software platforms.”
MostEpic Games recently filed a lawsuit against Apple in the UK claiming that Apple’s removal of Fortnite from the App Store is ‘illegal’ and that the app needs to be repaired. The British complaint followed in the footsteps of Epic’s agreements in the United States and Australia. In all countries, Epic is asking that it not seek damages from Apple and that it simply ‘wants fair access and competition that will benefit all consumers’. Both companies are preparing to go to court in July this year.