Apple, Google kick out Fortnite, maker launches legal battle

Apple and Google removed popular game Fortnite from their app stores after Epic Games added a direct payment option, prompting the company to take legal action.

Taylor Hatmaker from TechCrunch reported:

Epic added a direct payment option to its mobile game early Thursday, prompting Apple to remove Fortnite from the App Store. Now, the Android version of Fortnite has gone missing from Google’s  own app marketplace too.

Nick Statt from The Verge noted:

The decision marks a significant escalation in the feud between Epic and one of the world’s most dominant mobile software marketplaces. It also comes at an especially fraught time for Apple as the iPhone maker navigates antitrust concerns over its operation of the App Store and the rules it imposes on certain developers.

Following the removal, Epic revealed a carefully calculated series of responses, including an antitrust lawsuit seeking to establish Apple’s App Store as a monopoly and a protest video that aired on YouTube and within Fortnite itself mocking the iPhone maker’s iconic “1984” ad and calling on gaming fans to #FreeFortnite by supporting its fight against Apple.

Reuters’ Stephen Nellis and Munsif Vengattil reported:

Epic sued in U.S. court seeking no money from Apple or Google, but rather injunctions that would end many of the companies’ practices related to their app stores.

“Apple has become what it once railed against: the behemoth seeking to control markets, block competition, and stifle innovation. Apple is bigger, more powerful, more entrenched, and more pernicious than the monopolists of yesteryear,” Epic said in its lawsuit, filed in the Northern District of California.