Epic Games' court dates with Apple and Google pushed into 2024

Proceedings in the legal dispute between Epic Games and Apple have bogged down in Australia, and won't reach a courtroom until 2024. A Monday ruling of the nation's Federal Court decided that, as Google and Epic are also fighting over essentially the same issues, it makes no sense for Epic and Apple to air their grievances …

[Pascal Monett]

"they would not be ready by November"

I'm sorry, we're in April now. How is it that a bunch of scribblers won't be able to present anything in the next 7 months ?

Is it impacting their golf schedule ?

[luminous]

Re: "they would not be ready by November"

Lawyers have to pad...... that takes time.

[Cederic]

Re: "they would not be ready by November"

It does make you feel better about estimates for major implementation or migration programmes.

We're rehosting an entire business, they're merely agreeing whether a single business practice is anti-competitive or not.

[DS999]

Re: "they would not be ready by November"

Since lawyers for both sides said they wouldn't be ready, neither can complain about the delay.

[badflorist]

It's so stupid...

...how long this shit takes.

[Neoc]

"The point of this discovery is to lay the groundwork for a contention that players of Fortnite, following its removal from the Android and iOS platforms, are likely simply to have switched to playing the game on another platform such as the PlayStation or Xbox"

What the heck does that have to do with it? The point in contention is that if you want to offer anything ON AN APPLE DEVICE, you have no recourse but the pay Apple its danegeld. Google is almost as bad. Microsoft is trying to catch up.

THAT'S the point, not whether users can play on another type of device.

[gnasher729]

And if you want your goods to be sold in the nearest supermarket, you will have to pay them as well.

[gnasher729]

Just a bit of history

What happened: Epic submitted an application for review to Apple; Apple accepted it and put it on the App Store. Epic then changed the behaviour of programs that users had already downloaded; the change had not been seen by Apple to the review, and Apple would have 99% refused to accept it. If Apple had just refused to accept it, that would then by some normal conflict between the companies.

However, submitting an app that behaves differently during review than the same app installed on a user's device is absolutely against Apple's guidelines and for very good reason, because it makes a farce out of every review. So the app was blocked, Epic was told, and Epic filed a court case against Apple hours later. So clearly this had been planned that way by Epic all along.

Now I think it is quite normal that Apple doesn't want to do any business whatsoever with a company behaving like that, and they will never put any apps by Epic on their store. I think it will be very hard to argue against this, because it has nothing to do with competition, but with what is and what is not acceptable behaviour when you do business, and whether Apple can be forced to do business with a company like that.

[tiggity]

app stores are not equal

On android you can go to other non "play" app stores or sideload whatever you like (after making some trivial security settings changes).

AFAIK (not an apple phone user as not got money to burn, & also occasionally do android coding so having a physical android phone more useful than iPhone, even though its more snoopy / less secure) on apple devices sideloading is not really a viable option and the apple app store is the only option. (Please correct me if I'm wrong on this).

So with apple its essentially blocking Fortnite full stop.

With android its blocking Fortnite from the obvious app find and install store but users can go to a different app store or sideload.