Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. A similar ban on major platforms preventing developers from using outside payment was recently put into effect in South Korea. Furthermore, this ruling comes in tandem with proposed legislation that would solidify the ability for developers to use their own payment systems, as well as continued pushback on Apple from other directions on its restrictive walled garden. This is doubtless not the end of the fight, as either party can still escalate the issue to a higher court if they are dissatisfied. In total, Epic will pay Apple at least $3.6 million.
#Fortnite direct payment plus
The court has ordered Epic to pay out 30% of the $12,167,719 in revenue Epic collected from users in the Fortnite app on iOS through Direct Payment between August and October 2020, plus further damages. This is a double-edged sword: DX12 comes with fewer guardrails but gives developers more power and flexibility. However, Apple did counter-sue Epic for breach of contract, and the judge ruled in favor of Apple on this point. A major difference between the two APIs is that DX12 is more low-level than DX11, meaning that DX12 gives developers more fine-grained control of how their game interacts with your CPU and GPU. The court stated it believes the injunction will "increase competition, increase transparency, increase consumer choice and information while preserving Apple’s iOS ecosystem which has procompetitive justifications." The court's final order took issue with both parties' definitions of their "relevant markets," saying that the market the two were fighting over was neither Apple's own internal systems (as Epic said), nor all of gaming (as Apple claimed), but rather "digital mobile gaming transactions." Given that market, the court declared it "cannot ultimately conclude that Apple is a monopolist under either federal or state antitrust laws."īut nonetheless, the court stated that Apple's conduct was "anticompetitive," hence the injunction.