In California, a federal judge issued a decision Friday by ordering Apple to allow app developers to direct consumers to alternate payment methods outside Apple’s App Store.
The maker of the popular video game Fortnite, Epic Games, filed a lawsuit last year after Apple dropped the game from its App Store. In the lawsuit, Epic wanted to prove Apple's 15% to 30% commissions on transactions in iPhone apps are part of an illegal monopoly.
“Epic Games failed in its burden to demonstrate Apple is an illegal monopolist,” Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers wrote in her decision. “Nonetheless, the trial did show that Apple is engaging in anticompetitive conduct under California’s competition laws.”
According to another ruling, the judge ruled that Epic must pay Apple 30% of the roughly $12 million in revenue it collected from August 2020 to October 2020 for breach of contract when it established an alternative payment system in the Fortnite app.
