The popular multiplayer gaming app Fortnite has been removed by both Apple and Google from their stores. This app is no longer available on both the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store. The reason behind such a move is that the Epic Games, company that makes the Fortnite Gaming App, launched a direct payment plan bypassing Google and Apple. That is a payment system under which app users can pay Direct Epic Games.
Significantly, all such games have the option of these app purchases. That is, we have to pay to unlock some features of gaming. The rule is that Apple or Google, on whose platform this gaming app is, payment will be made only through their gateway. Since Google and Apple take 30% of these app purchase revenue of Epic Games. In such a situation, if this company takes direct payment from users, then Google and Apple will not be able to form a stake. It is obvious that both these companies have gone mad and they have removed this game from their platform.
Apple has said in a statement issued about this, ‘Epic has enabled a feature in its app that Apple has not reviewed or approved. They have done this with the intention of violating the app store guidelines of these app purchases which apply to every developer who sells goods and services’. However, this is slightly different in the case of Android. Google has removed it from the Play Store, but despite this, this app can be downloaded from the third-party App Store.
Google has said in one of its statements that because of Android’s open ecosystem, developers distribute apps through different app stores. Google has also said that Fortnite will be available for Android through another App Store, but under the policy, the company is removing it from the official Google Play Store.
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In Android smartphones, this game can be downloaded from other app stores such as Samsung’s Galaxy Store or other app libraries. This is not the case with Apple, the company’s ecosystem is different and here the app has been removed from the App Store, that is, it cannot be installed in the iPhone from anywhere else.
After being banned by Google and Apple, Epic Games has now sued both these companies. Epic Games has alleged that the in-app payment policy of Apple and Google is anti-competitive.
Epic’s lawsuit alleges that Apple has become a “behemoth seeking to control markets, block competition and stifle innovation. Apple is bigger, more powerful, more entrenched and more pernicious than monopolies of yesteryear,” Epic says in the suit. “Apple’s size and reach far exceed that of any technology monopolist in history.”
Epic’s lawsuit against Google accuses the tech giant of abandoning its idealistic roots and says Android’s claim that it’s an open ecosystem is a “broken promise.” “In 1998, Google was founded as an exciting young company with a unique motto: ‘Don’t Be Evil,'” reads the complaint. “Twenty-two years later, Google has relegated its motto to nearly an afterthought, and is using its size to do evil upon competitors, innovators, customers, and users in a slew of markets it has grown to monopolize.” However, Google declined to comment on the lawsuit.