Fifteen days on an iPhone … back when that was one thing. “/>Epic Games, creator of Fifteen days, is carrying a new map in its ongoing struggle against Apple by filing an antitrust complaint against the cell phone maker in the European Union.
Epic claims in its complaint that Apple uses its exclusive control over iOS applications to block competitors and benefit at the expense of developers, in breach of European competition law, the company said today.
“What is at stake here is the future of mobile platforms,” Epic CEO Tim Sweeney said in a written statement. “We are not going to sit back and let Apple use its platform domain to control what should be a level playing field. It is bad for consumers, who are paying inflated prices due to the complete lack of competition between stores and payment in the processing application. And it’s bad for developers, whose livelihoods often depend on Apple’s discretion as to who allows them to use the iOS platform and on what terms. “
Apple, meanwhile, said Epic is the sole author of its own problems, writing that the company has activated a feature “that has not been reviewed or approved by Apple”, deliberately and provocatively breaking Apple’s developer agreement by doing it. “His reckless behavior has turned customers into pawns and we hope to make that clear to the European Commission,” said Apple.
An ongoing battle
Apple is not wrong when it says that Epic broke its rules on purpose. This is exactly what Epic did last August, when it suddenly revealed an alternative in-app payment system for Fifteen days shopping on Android and iOS.
Apple explicitly requires that all in-app purchases go through its own payment system, where it gets a 30% reduction in sales. Shortly after Epic launched its alternative payment system – which offered players a discount on purchases to make the point – Apple started Fifteen days in the iOS app store. Epic, clearly ready and waiting, immediately filed a lawsuit alleging that Apple violated antitrust law.
This case is still pending slowly in federal court and will be for some time. For now, Fifteen days is still blocked on iOS, but other games using Epic’s Unreal engine are still allowed for now. The judge who oversees the case also dismissed some of Apple’s counterclaims against Epic.
A litany of complaints
As we explained earlier, you don’t have to have a literal market monopoly to violate antitrust law. Instead, the law is concerned with how you use the power you have. Although Apple controls a minority of the global smartphone market (Android has a larger market share in both the U.S. and the world), it may be leveraging its business in anti-competitive ways.
Epic is not the first to complain that Apple’s iOS App Store is illegal and it seems unlikely to be the last. Specifically in the EU, Spotify filed a similar complaint against Apple in 2019.
Spotify also needs to use Apple’s in-app payment system to make purchases, including subscription fees. Over time, Spotify argued, Apple has made it increasingly difficult for app makers to direct users to pay outside Apple’s ecosystem, such as through a website. In 2014, Spotify started making in-app purchases on iOS, but increased its prices by 30 percent – from almost 10 euros ($ 12) per month to almost 13 euros ($ 15.54) per month – to cover fees from Apple.
Since Apple also owns and operates its own music service, Spotify argued, Apple’s fee is directly anti-competitive and hurts rivals that challenge Apple’s own original apps, putting them at a price disadvantage. The Telegram messaging app also filed a similar complaint with European regulators in 2020.
Apple’s app store practices are also under investigation here in the United States. Last October, a Congressional report examining the market power of the big tech companies concluded that Apple uses the App Store exclusively. The committee responsible for writing the report found evidence that Apple’s leadership, including former CEO Steve Jobs, “acknowledged that [in-app payment] requirement would stifle competition and limit applications available to Apple customers. “