The ongoing legal battle between Epic Games and Apple has taken another turn after the latter was found to have violated a 2021 injunction that requires developers to be allowed to offer third-party payment systems.
Apple is guilty of “willful violation” of the injunction, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez-Rogers says.
While Apple has allowed links to third-party payment systems to be offered by developers for in-app purchases, it has been charging between 12% and 27% commission for those transactions despite not processing them.
Epic Games had argued that Apple should be held in contempt of court for failing to properly comply with the injunction that allowed third-party payments. Now, the court has laid out just how poorly it believes Apple behaved.
To summarize: One, after trial, the Court found that Apple’s 30 percent commission “allowed it to reap supracompetitive operating margins” and was not tied to the value of its intellectual property, and thus, was anticompetitive. Apple’s response: charge a 27 percent commission (again tied to nothing) on off-app purchases, where it had previously charged nothing, and extend the commission for a period of seven days after the consumer linked-out of the app. Apple’s goal: maintain its anticompetitive revenue stream.
Two, the Court had prohibited Apple from denying developers the ability to communicate with, and direct consumers to, other purchasing mechanisms. Apple’s response: impose new barriers and new requirements to increase friction and increase breakage rates with full page “scare” screens, static URLs, and generic statements. Apple’s goal: to dissuade customer usage of alternative purchase opportunities and maintain its anticompetitive revenue stream.
In the end, Apple sought to maintain a revenue stream worth billions in direct defiance of this Court’s Injunction.
For its part, Apple has confirmed that it strongly disagrees with the decision and will appeal, but for now, the outcome is clear; Apple must stop charging app developers payment transaction fees even if third-party payment systems are used.
You may also like to check out:
You can follow us on X, or Instagram, subscribe to our YouTube channel and even like our Facebook page to keep yourself updated on all the latest from Microsoft, Google, Apple, and the Web.
