Epic Games Lawsuit Against Apple Australia

Epic Games Lawsuit: Epic Games and Apple continue legal battle!

The Epic Games versus Apple saga continue as Epic Games has launched legal proceedings against Apple Australia. The battle between tech giants is heading towards a new Ozzie Battleground in addition to the California hearing which is due May next year.

Epic Games, the creator of the famous Fortnite, is of the view that Apple Australia is in clear violation of Australian Consumer Law. The motivation behind the lawsuit in Australia is the same as in the US; Apple’s business practices and iOS App Store is anti-competitive and discourages healthy market competition.

Moreover, Epic is also of the view that Apple’s practices restrain app developers from using “competing payment processing systems,” a system that can bypass Apple’s 30% commission on in-app transactions. Just to remind you here that Epic Games has famously tried this system before to circumvent Apple’s payment system in Fortnite, in response Apple removed Fortnite from it’s App Store altogether.

Epic Games Lawsuit

Epic Games resorted to the Federal Court of Australia and filed against Apple Australia claiming that Apple Australia is clearly violating the Australian Consumer Law as well as “various sections of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010.” Epic Games CEO, Tim Sweeney, in an interview with Sydney Morning Herald explained that why Epic Games has chosen Australia as its battleground against Apple, “It’s another set of laws under which Apple’s practices are clearly in violation.

And another chance to get this issue really thoroughly examined,” he said. “And also there’s a really big and growing mobile software industry in Australia, a lot of great game developers, and they all suffer dearly by Apple and Google’s 30 percent tax. I doubt there’s a single developer in Australia who makes more profit from their own games than Apple and Google make from their games.”

He continued, “It couldn’t hurt that Australia’s Competition and Consumer Commission launched its own examination of both the iOS App Store and Google Play in September. The study is wide-ranging, but includes “the extent of competition between Google and Apple’s app stores, and whether more pricing transparency is needed in Australia’s mobile apps market.”

The battle of tech giants is surely getting messier, Apple Australia has yet to release any official statement on the issue, let’s see how they respond.

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