Epic knowingly, intentionally, and publicly defied Apple's rules. In response Apple "threatened" exactly what they threaten every single other company doing the same -- to suspend or terminate your developer accounts if you don't remediate the issue. There is absolutely a basis for it, it certainly isn't "unrelated", and trying to attribute motives like spite or having a "temper tantrum" is baseless nonsense.
The court has blocked it because there could be greater harm in the short term (although that is grossly overblown -- the UE wouldn't stop working in the short or even medium term), but don't be confused into thinking this isn't a completely rote, normal response.
>The fact that fortnite is built on UE doesn't have any significance here.
You understand that Fortnite and UE are made by the same company, right? The canard that it has anything to do with what engine Fortnite uses is absurd noise.
You're talking about the reason Apple had to remove Fortnite following Epic Game's decision to add their own payment option. That doesn't explain why they reacted so aggressively towards Epic's Unreal Engine by threatening to block it.
Not just Epic. Apple do. If you think Epic Games and Epic International are wholly separate then telling Epic Games "Engineering efforts to improve hardware and software performance of Unreal Engine on Mac and iOS hardware;" would make no sense. It's very clear that Apple are threatening to do things that impact all of Epic in that letter.
What's less clear is whether or not Apple would have actually revoked Epic International's developer accounts. You might like to give Apple the benefit of the doubt, but it's ambiguous enough for a court to issue a ruling that Apple aren't allowed to do that. This is obviously not just Epic catastrophizing if the court agreed with them and ruled in their favor on that part.
As you might recall - Apple did retaliate previously by also banning an associated Epic Account (for Unreal Engine and such) but was later legally forced not to [1]
I think you're missing the largest part of that, though, and that's what makes your statement incorrect. Apple is not blocking anything that Epic can do with the Unreal Engine. What they're threatening is to revoke the assistance that Apple has always provided Epic as a partner. When WWDC and other presentations roll around, Apple always has presentations from Epic on new games that are coming out. That partnership has, in the past, included early access to dev tools and frameworks (like Metal and ARKit), direct access to engineers at Apple who help Epic optimize their software for Apple hardware, and also a direct feedback channel for licensed developers using the tools that Apple and Epic developed together. Apple is saying that, by violating the terms and losing their developer license, Epic would also be losing this partner access. After all, how can you partner with someone that's actively working against you?
So, to be clear, development for the Unreal Engine would absolutely be impacted but that is not the same thing as "blocking Unreal Engine". Apple can't block the Unreal Engine as a whole since developers license that separately from Epic.
The developer you are talking about didn't break the rules of the app store. Epic -the one with the development of Unreal Engine- is an entirely different legal entity than the one that broke Apple's rules - the forthnite developer. X broke a rule, Apple got pissy and punished both X and Y because both have the same owners. As the judge also acknowledged in the ruling.
It's worth noting that Apple in their latest legal filing (https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.364265...) has made a fairly aggressive argument asking the judge to allow them to terminate Epic's international developer account which is used to develop Unreal Engine. The argument is based primarily on two factors:
1. Epic snuck hidden code into Fortnite. Apple no longer trusts that Epic won't also sneak hidden code into Unreal Engine.
2. Epic International is apparently collecting the payments from international iOS users that are using the hidden payment system in Fortnite, so it is directly linked to the breaching conduct.
So there's still a very real risk that Epic will lose access to the developer tools and signing capabilities for its Unreal Engine business as well.
Huh, Apple said it would disable Epic's developer accounts? They never threatened anyone using Unreal Engine, and I don't believe they specified UE Developer accounts.
We can only speculate that UE Developer accounts would have been terminated as we don't really know if Apple was going to terminate those too as they belong to a separate company according to the court documents.
Apple says they did it for no reason other than that they could, not because Epic violated anything.
> “Epic’s egregious breach of its contractual obligations to Apple led courts to determine that Apple has the right to terminate ‘any or all of Epic Games’ wholly owned subsidiaries, affiliates, and/or other entities under Epic Games’ control at any time and at Apple’s sole discretion.’ In light of Epic’s past and ongoing behavior, Apple chose to exercise that right.”
Apologies. The injunction ended up passing such that the tooling was not in fact revoked by Apple.
Epic relies heavily on deploying Fortnite in order to test the Unreal Engine at scale. Fortnite itself is, in some sense, the test bed from which many improvements and fixes are carried back to the mainline engine. Any studio or publisher relying on the Unreal Engine to deploy to iOS or MacOS would be more or less immediately effected, especially given the volatility of Apple's APIs.
Apple's policy on terminating entire developer accounts is consistent in that malicious violations of the guidelines will be considered breach of contract and warrant deletion of the account within 14 days.
> Not only does this prohibit updates to Fortnite on iOS, but it could impact every game that uses Epic’s Unreal Engine game creation tools.
Is this because Epic can't test and develop Unreal on iOS or macOS? Apple's petty overreaction aside here, how do game developers using Unreal feel being caught in the middle of this fued?
According to the court filing, Apple is denying Epic access to any development tools, software betas, APIs and the like. Epic will not be able to keep Unreal Engine up to date. Including on MacOS.
The end result will be that Unreal Engine, and all applications developed with it will be dead in the water on MacOS/iOS/iPadOS.
From the the legal filing:
>... when Epic sued Apple to break its monopoly on app stores and in-app payments, Apple retaliated ferociously. It told Epic that by August 28, Apple will cut off Epic’s access to all development tools necessary to create software for Apple’s platforms—including for the Unreal Engine Epic offers to third-party developers, which Apple has never claimed violated any Apple policy. Not content simply to remove Fortnite from the App Store, Apple is attacking Epic’s entire business in unrelated areas.
and...
>Apple stated that unless Epic capitulates, Apple will also block “[e]ngineering efforts to improve hardware and software performance of Unreal Engine on Mac and iOS hardware [and] optimize Unreal Engine for the Mac for creative workflows”.
Epic's motion had several parts. The judge denied Epic's motion to be restored to the App Store. But the judge did grant a restraining order to prevent Apple from closing all of Epic's developer accounts. That was the retaliation, and the judge said it fit the criterion of irreparable harm.
If Apple had simply removed Fortnite and stopped there, they'd be in a better position legally, and in terms of PR.
One can agree with one side or the other but this is nothing short of Apple using its dominant position to try and hurt Epic because they got mad. It has nothing to do with kicking someone out for breach of the app store rules. Fortnight and Epic's Unreal engine are two entirely different legal entities. As you could have read in the ruling.
Except the developer Apple wanted to ban was Epic and their Unreal engine. That is an entirely different legal entity and developer than Fortnite the game developers on the app store. It also says so in the ruling. So what Apply did was punish X for what Y did. They might as well have banned Microsoft for siding with Epic.
While I generally agree, I don't think Epic is an accurate comparison.
They obviously knew that Fortnight would get banned from the Appstore, and it was a business decision for them to make.
However, it would have been reasonable for them to assume that they would maintain their ability to still develop UnrealEngine, so they can publish source code for other developers to publish games from their own accounts. That overreach was Apple's doing.
It appears that the courts agreed as well, requiring Apple to allow Epic to continue UE4 development, while maintaining the Fortnight ban.
Nah, the relevant part of the lawsuit is that Apple is revoking not only the Fortnite developer account (which could be considered fair) but that they threaten to revoke the developer accounts of everyone working on the Unreal Engine, too.
I used to do consulting work as part of which I submitted Mac compatibility patches into the Unreal Engine source code repository. As is, it is not clear to me if I'll be hit by the Apple ban-hammer, too, or if they will limit it to "only" the 4000+ people directly employed by Epic.
The court has blocked it because there could be greater harm in the short term (although that is grossly overblown -- the UE wouldn't stop working in the short or even medium term), but don't be confused into thinking this isn't a completely rote, normal response.
>The fact that fortnite is built on UE doesn't have any significance here.
You understand that Fortnite and UE are made by the same company, right? The canard that it has anything to do with what engine Fortnite uses is absurd noise.
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