Tech giants show Epic support against Apple’s payment rules

21 Mar 2024

Image: © Koshiro/Stock.adobe.com

Meta, Microsoft, Match Group and X have thrown their hats in with Epic Games and claim Apple has made it difficult for app developers to move customers to alternative payments methods.

Epic Games seems to have gained some allies in its ongoing disputes with Apple, as several Big Tech companies have called out the iPhone maker for its app payment rules.

Meta, Microsoft, Match Group and X have all weighed in with an amicus brief, supporting a claim from Epic Games that Apple failed to honour a court-ordered injunction in 2021. This injunction was meant to stop Apple from preventing app developers from using “buttons, external links or other calls to action” informing users of payment options outside of their apps.

The companies that filed the amicus brief claim they have all dealt with methods from Apple that aim to prevent them from moving users away from Apple’s own payment processing system. They claim that Apple is in violation of the 2021 injunction as it has made it difficult to move customers to cheaper ways to pay for content.

The companies claim that Apple’s new process to allow developers to share an “out-of-app purchase mechanism” includes “dozens of requirements and limitations to which developers must adhere to” to be eligible to include an external link in their apps.

“The Apple plan leaves in place anti-steering rules that this court expressly found to be anti-competitive and imposes new restrictions on app developers that ensure the price competition that the injunction was designed to promote will never materialise,” the amicus brief reads.

The move by these Big Tech companies follows a legal push by Epic Game last week. The gaming company demanded that Apple be held in contempt of the earlier court order and that it was conducting “sham” compliance, Reuters reports.

Epic V Apple

Epic Games has been in legal battles with Apple for years, criticising the tech giant for how it handles its App Store.

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has been an outspoken critics of Apple’s attempts to comply with the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). In January, he said that proposals made by the company to comply with the EU rules were “a devious new instance of malicious compliance”.

Epic is not alone in its criticism. An open letter signed by 34 organisations – including Epic, Spotify and the president of Microsoft’s Xbox business – was sent to the European Commission earlier this month, stating various concerns about Apple’s proposed measures to comply with the DMA.

The open letter called Apple’s proposed measures a “mockery” of the DMA and criticised the new fees proposed by Apple for developers, which the signatories claim seems designed to “maintain and even amplify Apple’s exploitation of its dominance over app developers”. Shortly after, Apple terminated an account that Epic intended to use to develop an app store for iOS, but this termination was later reversed.

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Leigh Mc Gowran is a journalist with Silicon Republic

editorial@siliconrepublic.com