How Epic Games Is Looting the Store That Apple Visionaries Built
When “informed choice” means forcing Apple to advertise its rivals, something’s upside-down. The court just handed the keys to Apple’s Platform to Epic Games – rent-free. Is this justice or plunder?
Imagine a local merchant barging into the glittering halls of a wildly popular marketplace and demanding the prime stall, rent‑free. When refused, he summons armed muscle to seize the premises in the name of marketplace “freedom.” The marketplace has no recourse, because the armed muscle it would have called for help is the one turning against it.
Today, Apple’s App Store is that lucrative marketplace; Epic Games is the exploitative merchant, and the government, armed with antitrust laws, is the hired muscle.
Epic’s Sneak Attack on the App Store
The legal showdown began in August 2020, when Epic smuggled an unauthorized payment workaround into Fortnite to avoid Apple’s 30% transaction fee. Facing such an egregious violation against its App Store terms, Apple rightly removed the game. Epic sued, accusing Apple of “monopolizing” iOS distribution and payments. A 2021 ruling rejected the federal antitrust charge but held that Apple violated the California Unfair Competition Law (UCL), effectively a state-level antitrust law.1
The court claims that Apple prevented “informed choice among users of the iOS platform” by prohibiting links to outside payment options.2 The court of appeals affirmed the argument, deciding that without those restrictions, competitors like Epic Games Store, which offers a 12% commission compared to Apple’s 30%, would “offer iOS users alternatives” that consumers could reasonably be expected to accept.3 The result: Apple has to allow external payment options, putting its whole business model at risk.
In April 2025, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rodgers held Apple in civil contempt for violating the injunction, emphasizing that Apple attempted to “maintain its anticompetitive revenue stream over compliance.”4 While allowing external payment options, Apple introduced external link design restrictions and “scare screens” (full screen warnings that the customer is leaving the App Store and a third-party payment processor might not protect privacy, security, or offer subscription management as Apple does) to steer users away from following external links, and a new 27% fee on external purchases to capture revenue from those who still do. Since the contempt order, Apple has been forced to allow external payments with no new fees or warnings.5
While Apple did receive some monetary damages on the basis of their counterclaim for Epic’s admitted breach of contract, it is little condolence in the face of this threat to the future of their business.6 The law and this decision represent a total inversion of justice.
Apple’s Revolutionary Achievement
Think of what lies behind a single tap on an iPhone icon. In that split second, Apple’s custom silicon authenticates you, encrypted enclaves unlock credentials, and a globe-spanning delivery network pushes code while reconciling taxes in 200 jurisdictions and filtering fraud — every millisecond funded and engineered by Apple. All of this makes it possible for a college student in Mumbai to polish an idea for a new app at midnight and ship it to a billion pockets before sunrise.
None of the amazing infrastructure of the App Store existed until Apple staked the future of its business on the conviction that people would prize a cohesive, secure mobile experience. Every hardware encryption, every human review, every petabyte of telemetry bears the thoughtful, consumer-focused signature of the company that built it.
Because Apple proved so spectacularly right, the App Store didn’t just host software, it awakened a colossal global appetite for it. A multibillion‑dollar marketplace materialized almost overnight, and businesses of every stripe raced to meet the demand: ride hailing, same‑day grocery delivery, indie film studios, and Epic Games’s own Fortnite — with its stadium‑size tournaments and billion‑dollar in‑app economy — all rushed to stake their claim on the platform Apple envisioned and tirelessly maintains.
Instead of gratitude for its achievement, Apple received a court order.
Epic’s Epic Distortions
Like any producer, Apple has the moral right to decide who it trades with, on what conditions, and at what price. It was fully within its rights to remove all Epic Games content from the App Store for breaching contract. The courts, however, demanded that Apple take no action against any Epic Games product beyond Fortnite.7 But Apple should be free to evict vendors from its App Store at will. It built the App Store platform, and therefore owns it.
Epic CEO Tim Sweeney casts the lawsuit as a crusade for “the freedom for creators to distribute as they choose.”8 Yet Fortnite’s distribution thrives, without Apple, on PCs, Xbox, PlayStation, Switch, and Android’s billion‑plus‑user marketplace. The only “freedom” it lacked was the “freedom” to use Apple’s market while dodging the toll. After hitching a ride on Apple’s rails to an instant worldwide audience, Epic now insists on riding first class for free, demanding the legal power to tap Apple’s infrastructure, brand, and user trust while refusing to pay for it.
Because Apple financed, engineered, and continues to safeguard their platform, its 30% commission is not a “tax,” as Sweeney likes to deride it.9 It is the price of admission, which companies pay voluntarily to access the value Apple created. To brand this arrangement “exploitation” is a moral travesty: it demands Apple surrender justly earned rewards. Epic never had to offer Fortnite on the App Store. They chose to — in implicit acknowledgment of the value of Apple’s platform.
The court claims that Apple impedes “informed choice.” Yet, besides the fact that the App Store itself is an engine of information about what apps are available (about 1.8 million of them!10), Apple pioneered the mechanics that inform customers on multiple fronts such as ratings, reviews, and privacy labels. Informing customers is good business.
One fitting response from Apple is found in the private text message exchange (now in the courts’ public record) by Apple’s communications director: “It’s our F*****G STORE.”
It sure is.
But spotlighting rival payment routes and cannibalizing your own store is obviously not good business. Ordering Apple to plaster its storefront with rival payment links is like forcing a bookstore to tape competitors’ coupons across its windows. Such a mandate is an enormous injustice that strips Apple of the right to profit from the value it has created. Thus, it is not Apple we should hold in contempt for trying to protect its revenue stream from the App Store through introducing “scare screens” or a new 27% fee. What we should hold in contempt is the legal framework leading to an unjust expropriation Apple understandably tried to mitigate.
One fitting response from Apple is found in the private text message exchange (now in the courts’ public record) by Apple’s communications director: “It’s our F*****G STORE” [redacted].11 It sure is.
End the Legalized Looting
Publicly, Apple has to be more reserved as it is still working on an appeal that will hopefully bring justice to one of the most valuable companies in history.
Meanwhile, Apple reinstated Fortnite to avoid more wrath from the judge, and other companies, enabled by Epic’s legal case, are already scrambling to cash in on the exploitation as well.12 The payment platform Stripe, mere hours after the 2025 contempt ruling, published detailed documentation showing businesses how to plug into its checkout system for a fraction of Apple’s commission. Spotify too made tweaks to its iOS app to allow users to bypass Apple and pay commission-free on the web. Even Amazon’s Kindle jumped on the bandwagon.
While major blame lies with Epic Games and other free riders on Apple, none would have been able to exploit Apple without the existence of the “unfair competition” laws. Epic Games couches its campaign in the language of “liberty,” but it uses the force of the law against the very thing that liberty protects: freedom of contract.13 A system that seeks to deprive producers of control over their businesses is institutionalizing plunder.
Justice demands that those who create have the right to decide the terms of trade and to claim the rewards that result. To achieve that justice, we need to eliminate the tools of legalized looting. This means repealing legislation like California’s Unfair Competition Law and the federal antitrust laws.
Epic Games, Inc. v. Apple Inc., No. 4:20-cv-05640-YGR (N.D. Cal. Sept. 10, 2021), Rule 52 Order After Trial on The Merits.
ibid.
Epic Games, Inc. v. Apple Inc., No. 21-16506 (9th Cir. Apr. 24, 2023), Opinion by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Epic Games, Inc. v. Apple Inc., No. 4:20-cv-05640-YGR (N.D. Cal. Apr. 30, 2025), Contempt Order.
Mike Scarcella, “Apple Loses Bid to Pause App Store Reform Order in Epic Games Case,” Reuters, June 4, 2025.
Epic Games, Inc. v. Apple Inc., No. 4:20-cv-05640-YGR (N.D. Cal. Sept. 10, 2021), Rule 52 Order After Trial on the Merits. Judgment.
Epic Games, Inc. v. Apple Inc., No. 4:20‑cv‑05640‑YGR (N.D. Cal. Aug. 24, 2020), Order Granting in Part and Denying in Part Motion for Temporary Restraining Order.
Ceci, Laura, “Number of Available Apps in the Apple App Store from 1st Quarter 2015 to 2nd Quarter 2024,” Jun. 24, 2025, Statista.com.
Trial Exhibit 1542–23, Epic Games, Inc. v. Apple Inc., No. 4:20-cv-05640-YGR (N.D. Cal.), p. CX-0244.38.
Sisco, Josh, and Gurman, Mark, “Apple Must Resolve ‘Fortnite’ Return or Answer for It to Judge,” Bloomberg, May 19, 2025.
Higgins, Tim, and Needleman, Sarah E., “Fortnite’s Mastermind Goes to Battle with Apple,” Wall Street Journal, Apr. 26, 2021.
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Excellent analysis. Thanks.