Epic Games vs Apple Justice Trial: Days 1 and 2

This week, Epic Games' trial of Apple's App Store monopoly case began. It is expected to last for about three weeks. I will make a series of abstracts based on the materials I read every day.

At present, there is no live video of the trial process, only a voice conference accessed by phone , and relying on the media and professionals present to narrate.

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney (hereafter referred to as TS), and Apple's former senior vice president of marketing and App Store head Phil Schiller, are expected to participate in the daily court trial throughout.

The first day of the court trial, Apple's opening, argued that the App Store was part of its product design and was more effective at protecting security and privacy on iOS than its competitors. In addition, Apple believes that each app is built on Apple's intellectual property technology, so they have the right to charge a fee.

Apple pointed out that Epic Games just does not want to accept the 30% commission, and this 30% is not the first of Apple's creation. Since the Steam game mall in 2003, the industry's mainstream commission is 30% ( source P.16 ). The lawsuit will affect the home game console market, which also takes a 30% commission and also controls software installation channels.

Apple has also cut the commission for most developers to 15% through the "App Store Small Business Program" (Editor's Note: Three months after Epic Games sued).

The opening of Epic Games pointed out that Apple once claimed that the App Store itself is not profitable, but only needs to add practical value to iOS. However, according to Apple's internal information, the App Store has been profitable since the second year of its opening in 2009. (Editor's note: In previous hearings, Apple's former iOS president Scott Forstall also confirmed that the App Store's profits far exceed its operating costs).

Epic Games' opening criticized Apple's long-standing "walled garden" product design for locking users into its own ecosystem. Although Apple claims that in addition to "native apps" that can only be listed on the App Store, there are "Web App" technologies that are free and unregulated, but this technology is not powerful enough to make its own game "Fortnite" work smoothly. (Editor's note: Former Apple iOS president Scott Forstall previously confirmed a similar argument).

Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers (hereafter referred to as YGR) asked an important question: In 2007 and 2008 (the first two years of the iPhone's launch), did the technology at the time allow Fortnite to be played on the iPhone? Epic Game TS said it couldn't, because the iPhone's display chip at the time was not capable enough. Judge YGR said, doesn't that mean that Apple really needs to do some technical progress to make your game work? Isn't this the same as other game console platforms? Epic Games TS said the development is technically similar, but he wanted to point out that the business models of the two are different.

During the cross-examination, Apple’s lawyers questioned whether Epic Games violated the App Store policy by presenting IAP and direct payment (lower price) in the Fortnite game by remote setting in August last year (2020). Know that this will cause Fortnite to be removed from the App Store? Epic Games TS said he knew it was a possibility, but he wasn't sure; he was hoping that Apple would rethink its policy.

At the end of the first day and the second day, it was deeply researched that Apple's App Store allowed the cross-platform online play and cross-platform wallet features of "Fortnite". Instead, it was the Sony PlayStation platform that was negotiated and negotiated after more than a year of being on the shelves. Cross-platform online games were only opened in 2018, but so far they still refuse to use cross-platform wallets, which means they can only be stored and used on the Sony PlayStation platform. Epic Games TS said that he also believes that these game console platform manufacturers monopolize the game distribution channel.

Apple lawyer Richard Doren (hereinafter referred to as RD) pointed out that if "Fortnite" is still on iOS, players can theoretically purchase online through the Safari browser on iOS and return to "Fortnite". Judge YGR asked why Epic Games did not adopt this scheme, TS said that this scheme was not very attractive to players, and admitted that they also did not implement this mechanism. Judge YGR concluded that this means that what Epic Games really wants to pursue is to enable players to "impulse purchases".

Epic Games brought in Benjamin Simon, founder and CEO of the app company Down Dog Yoga, and pointed out that they have adopted a higher price in IAP, but still 50% of iOS users pay with IAP. On the contrary, they provide external purchase links in the Android app, only 10% of users will pay with IAP, and if they try to not provide external purchase links according to the iOS policy, about 50% of users will also pay with IAP.

Simon further pointed out that Stripe is a better payment mechanism than Apple's IAP, and complained that IAP is not friendly to the free trial mechanism, and that the reviewer during the App Review questioned that the integration function of Apple Health could not be found, but it was actually because the reviewer used The one is the iPad (Editor's Note: This kind of App Review is unprofessional, it can be said to be endless).

Aashish Patel, who attended on behalf of Nvidia, said that they had developed a native iOS app for the GeForce NOW cloud gaming platform, which could better handle streaming latency issues, but Apple ultimately rejected it and required each game to be released one by one, but Nvidia No permissions for these games. Eventually GeForce NOW was launched as a Web App and received many positive reviews. Of course, there is no commission to be paid to Apple.

Main references: https://groups.io/g/Apple-Epic-trial/message/1 , https://groups.io/g/Apple-Epic-trial/message/2