US Supreme Court Declines to Hear Apple vs. Epic Games Case

[Shirasaki]

Did you read the case? Epic barely tried— this was a vanity suit that Epic thought they could win as a popularity contest “Your kids love Fortnite and hate Apple, so side with us.”

Seriously, read the ruling. Epic never had much of a leg to stand on, but they were also lazy in their approach as was pointed out by the judge throughout her ruling.

Sweeney wanted to present himself as a populist hero, and maybe he convinced some people he was, but in the end this wasn’t about protecting consumers it was about wanting to muscle in on territory. I was going to make a Don Quixote reference but Quixote was at least pure of heart, Sweeney has all the delusions of grandeur but none of the good intentions.

There could be multitude of reasons why Epic appears to be so ill-prepared for this crusade. I would not simply call Epic “never had much of a leg to stand on” or “lazy in their approach” outside of the arguably poorly presented argument they present to the judge. They know best what they want to present and what they don’t want to. To me it’s a bit more on Epic not having deep pocket to get a better lawyer than Apple can supply, thus weakening their chance of making a proper argument substantially.

On the other hand, if Epic was deemed “lazy” and ill-prepared during this whole ordeal, one has to question why they even bother in the first place, knowing full well they cannot win the marathon financially against Apple. Outside of public statements and maybe leaked insider info, we never know.

By the way, SU rejected the separate hearing requests from both Apple and Epic, meaning whatever ruling that puts a small dent on Apple’s monopolistic behaviour gets to stay while Epic fail to convince the judge what they want is legally reasonable. Apple has the bigger win, this time.

 

[tridley68]

Good for the Supreme court they have much more important things than this foolish nonsense 👍

 

[victorvictoria]

If you order software outside the Apple Store, I wish you good luck.

 

[spazzcat]

There could be multitude of reasons why Epic appears to be so ill-prepared for this crusade. I would not simply call Epic “never had much of a leg to stand on” or “lazy in their approach” outside of the arguably poorly presented argument they present to the judge. They know best what they want to present and what they don’t want to. To me it’s a bit more on Epic not having deep pocket to get a better lawyer than Apple can supply, thus weakening their chance of making a proper argument substantially.

On the other hand, if Epic was deemed “lazy” and ill-prepared during this whole ordeal, one has to question why they even bother in the first place, knowing full well they cannot win the marathon financially against Apple. Outside of public statements and maybe leaked insider info, we never know.

By the way, SU rejected the separate hearing requests from both Apple and Epic, meaning whatever ruling that puts a small dent on Apple’s monopolistic behaviour gets to stay while Epic fail to convince the judge what they want is legally reasonable. Apple has the bigger win, this time.

Epic lost because they violated the contract they had with Apple. Contracts have meaning and come with legal consequences when you violate that them. They went about this 100% wrong and borderline childish. You seem to think Epic is an underdog they are not they had $820 million in revenue in 2022.

 

[Student of Life]

It should be noted that before they were removed for the App Store, Epic made around a billion in sales a year on the App Store. So thats 700 million a year that has been missing for 3 years. Thats 2.1 billion dollars in lost revenue and then add attoney cost.

 

[BaldiMac]

Epic lost because they violated the contract they had with Apple. Contracts have meaning and come with legal consequences when you violate that them. They went about this 100% wrong and borderline childish. You seem to think Epic is an underdog they are not they had $820 million in revenue in 2022.

$820 million was only their game store revenue. Their total revenue was around $5 billion.

 

[Skyscraperfan]

So Americans will now buy their iPhones in the EU or Japan?

 

[truthsteve]

great news. **** epic

 

[CarAnalogy]

Anti steering never made sense. People say it’s like forcing target to tell people they can get it cheaper at Walmart, but it’s more like target telling their vendors their packages aren’t allowed to tell their customers about their own website.

 

[BaldiMac]

Anti steering never made sense. People say it’s like forcing target to tell people they can get it cheaper at Walmart, but it’s more like target telling their vendors their packages aren’t allowed to tell their customers about their own website.

I'm on the fence with the anti-steering stuff. On the one hand, I think a reader app like netflix should be able to link to a sign up page. But on the other, I don't want to see most developers bypassing IAP by linking to a webpage. Not because I want Apple to get a cut, but because IAP is more convenient for me as a consumer.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

Yes! This along with the EU deadline looming, we are about to break away from Apple's greedy chains. Can't wait to put whatever apps I want on my iPhone. USB-C charging is great, btw... half the cables I used to have.

Apple currently has a considerably smaller marketshare compared to Android in the EU. With Apple becoming MORE like Android, their marketshare is going to increase. Apple’s greedy chains are actually going to become thicker and almost unbreakable as the EU depends more and more on Apple’s hardware.

It’s interesting how “making Apple hardware more desirable” is seen as “breaking Apple’s greedy chains”. Funding and fostering a healthy competing hardware platform and OS is how the EU would leave Apple AND Google behind. Unfortunately for the EU, they don’t have those skills.

 

[MallardDuck]

Honestly this is a reasonable outcome. You can restrict the platform, but you can't restrict speech. So just put a link in your app to a site to buy a subscription and be done with it.

I fully expect Apple to replace that revenue though - perhaps the first 50,000 downloads of an app are free, then after that, it costs $1/app or something like that.

 

[CarAnalogy]

I'm on the fence with the anti-steering stuff. On the one hand, I think a reader app like netflix should be able to link to a sign up page. But on the other, I don't want to see most developers bypassing IAP by linking to a webpage. Not because I want Apple to get a cut, but because IAP is more convenient for me as a consumer.

Like so many things if Apple would just enforce this consistently, it would be one thing. But they wind up making deals and arbitrary rejections to the point that it’s clearly just a money making issue for them, they don’t care about the user experience. Steve Jobs said the App Store would be run at cost and not as a profit center but that ship sailed long, long ago. And you see why he would say that, the incentives quickly became perverse and to the detriment of both users and developers.

Why is Netflix allowed to have an app that “doesn’t do anything” without an account? And even then the welcome page has zero information on it. They could have sidestepped a lot of the controversy and regulation of the App Store if they had just been less obstinate about this one thing. I agree integrated purchasing is better, but it’s been used as a leverage to get their 30%. First they basically revise history and tell us it was impossible to distribute and charge for apps before the App Store, now they want to take it further and erase any mention of the fact that people can buy software subscriptions on a web site.

I understand their security and convenience arguments but they’ve been undermined by their arbitrary application of their own rules. None of this is about user experience or the right way to do software distribution. All of this is just about money and who gets what cut of it. No more, no less.

 

[haydn!]

I would not want to be working as a developer at Apple right now. So many things that need to be changed lately and hard deadlines (e. g. the EU stuff by March) and now this

To be fair, this should have little to no impact on Apple's developers as they don't develop the third party apps this benefits, third parties do. The only thing it will impact is Apple's app review process - which again, should actually make it marginally simpler as its one less thing for reviewers to be checking/pushing back on.

 

[haydn!]

So someone answer this question. Does this mean developers can now get to place their product in the App Store without paying Apple anything for operating the App Store? They get to collect 100% of the price off their app and Apple gets $0 for hosting their app? How can this be fair to Apple? We already know that big retailers charge manufacturers for premium shelf space placement.

In theory, yes. But, developers/third parties are going to be stupid to not offer Apple Pay as at least an option, even if they can now point people to other points of payment more easily.

Choice is key, and as a consumer, I will always pick the quickest and most convenient way to pay. It's fast became annoying to shop online, reaching a payment page and find that retailer doesn't have the 'pay with Apple Pay' option and I've cancelled transactions there and then because I don't have a card to hand. So, I think if devs offer the choice, the majority will opt for convenience still and Apple will therefore get a decent amount of revenue still.

 

[BaldiMac]

Like so many things if Apple would just enforce this consistently, it would be one thing. But they wind up making deals and arbitrary rejections to the point that it’s clearly just a money making issue for them, they don’t care about the user experience.

I think this is overblown. A few dozen apps get headlines for claiming to be rejected for arbitrary purposes. Meanwhile, all we hear is one side of the argument.

Steve Jobs said the App Store would be run at cost and not as a profit center but that ship sailed long, long ago. And you see why he would say that, the incentives quickly became perverse and to the detriment of both users and developers.

I disagree. I think the policies are overwhelming pro consumer.

Why is Netflix allowed to have an app that “doesn’t do anything” without an account? And even then the welcome page has zero information on it. They could have sidestepped a lot of the controversy and regulation of the App Store if they had just been less obstinate about this one thing.

Nothing arbitrary about that. Reader apps are allowed to do that per longstanding policy. Yes, I'm aware of the recent controversy around the Hey calendar app. It was an edge case that was quickly resolved.

I agree integrated purchasing is better, but it’s been used as a leverage to get their 30%. First they basically revise history and tell us it was impossible to distribute and charge for apps before the App Store, now they want to take it further and erase any mention of the fact that people can buy software subscriptions on a web site.

I don't think any of that is accurate. They didn't claim what you said. And the anti-steering provisions aren't new.

I understand their security and convenience arguments but they’ve been undermined by their arbitrary application of their own rules. None of this is about user experience or the right way to do software distribution. All of this is just about money and who gets what cut of it. No more, no less.

I disagree. I think their rules are enforced extremely consistently. No, they are not perfect, but that''s a ridiculous standard.

 

[bluecoast]

I think in time 3rd party payment systems will be allowed. We'll have to see how it pans out in the EU.

In the meantime, at least you'll be able to go to various developers' sites and pay. Well apart from Epic's.

 

[Carnegie]

Declining to hear is a ruling, they are ruling the lower court is correct.

That's not correct. Often a cert denial is a positive indication for a lower court decision, but it's not an affirmation of the lower court decision. The Supreme Court's own adopted rules, as well as experience, make this clear. Sometimes the Court doesn't take up a given issue and let's lower court decisions on that issue stand for a while and then eventually takes a particular case and rules on it in a way which effectively overrules those other decisions and establishes new law on the issue.

One thing the Court considers when considering cert petitions is whether there have been conflicting decisions on matters of law from lower courts. Is there a circuit split where, e.g., the Ninth Circuit concluded something contrary to what the Third Circuit concluded? Or a state's highest court concluded something contrary to what a federal circuit court concluded?

Often the Supreme Court waits and lets multiple lower courts consider a given question, and flesh out the issue, before it decides to step in and consider the matter itself.

 

[Carnegie]

So I guess at this point with the law being settled, the pertinent question is will Epic return to the App Store or continue to lose millions?

At this point that's up to Apple. My guess is that it isn't inclined to let Epic's account (i.e. the one used for Fortnite) go active again.

 

[aParkerMusic]

Except they can't prevent devs from circumventing the app tax by directing users to payment options outside of the app. Seems like a pretty big deal.

If you think devs are gonna actually offer a discount to buy outside the App Store, as opposed to trying to trick people into leaving the App Store and charging the same exact price (thereby getting more money from the customer), you’re naive.

For all the criticism of Apple being evil and greedy, the devs just want more of the price they charge…just like Apple. And frankly, most people won’t bother to buy things outside the App Store anyway. So…not necessarily a pretty big deal. We’ll see.

 

[Carnegie]

So someone answer this question. Does this mean developers can now get to place their product in the App Store without paying Apple anything for operating the App Store? They get to collect 100% of the price off their app and Apple gets $0 for hosting their app? How can this be fair to Apple? We already know that big retailers charge manufacturers for premium shelf space placement.

Here’s another question. I download an app from Apple’s App Store but I pay for it using the developer’s third party payment processor. I decide the app isn't what I want and I want a refund, or I claim it was an unauthorized payment. Who’s on the hook to give me my money back? Who do i blame if I’m turned down. What if my kid ran up a thousand dollar bill on a game I got from the App Store but paid for elsewhere? We all know the answer but I guarantee the average user will expect Apple to make things right since it’s their App Store.

To the first paragraph... No, it doesn't mean that.

Nothing in this decision or the injunction against Apple prevents it from demanding a commission for the use of its IP or the App Store. Neither the district court's opinion nor the Ninth Circuit's opinion suggest that it can't do so. If anything, they affirm Apple's right to collect a commission.

If it wants to it can continue to require a commission be paid on certain kinds of digital sales, though it may want to reduce that commission for payments made through other parties to reflect the cost of processing such payments.

 

[aParkerMusic]

3rd party app purchase is the main reason why Epic sued Apple. It is the most critical part.

Only an Epic sycophant could believe that.

Epic lost on EVERY POINT except anti-steering. Which, you know, kind of implies they were battling over way more than just anti-steering.

In real terms, it’s not clear what the impact will be, ESPECIALLY if Apple is allowed to provide a pop-up, as they SHOULD be able to, when a customer chooses to leave the app to pay outside of Apple’s system that the customer will be dealing directly with the app developer and Apple will no longer be involved with the transaction, I.e. youre left at the devs mercy. You might be very disappointed by the results.

its all about letting the customer decide by providing them the right info, right? Isn’t that what this battle was about? Well, how about when people realized they will have to deal with a whole list of potentially dubious devs, rather than just dealing with Apple? Haha

 

[wilhoitm]

The European Union (EU) should learn from this case, American companies should not be punished for being successful! Maxism is a failed Economic theory! The Free Market System self policies economies!

 

[Carnegie]

Except they can't prevent devs from circumventing the app tax by directing users to payment options outside of the app. Seems like a pretty big deal.

I'm not sure where from people are getting this idea that Apple has to stop requiring a commission on certain kinds of digital sales just because payments are made through other parties. Nothing about this case suggests that. If anything the decisions affirm Apple's right to charge a commission for the use of its IP and its App Store.

How Apple decides to handle commissions going forward is still largely up to Apple. But I doubt that it decides, at least for now, to do away with the commission requirement on certain kinds of digital sales for those who choose to steer users to other payment options. Maybe it will or maybe it will only in limited circumstances, but at this point it's still Apple's decision to make.

 

[sunny5]

Epic lost on EVERY POINT except anti-steering. Which, you know, kind of implies they were battling over way more than just anti-steering.

And that one lose is quite critical as I mentioned before. That's the main reason why Apple sued Epic. So what's the point?