A legal breakdown of what happens next in the Epic Games vs. Apple case shaking up the mobile market

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This article was written by Futura Digital partner Alexandra Kurdyumova and associate Nazar Volkov.

Epic Games has continues on with its long-term war against Apple, which started in 2020. Its recent big win saw a US judge force Apple to allow developers to link out to their own alternative payment systems.

But how did we get here and how it will affect mobile games industry in the future?

Here we unpack the story of the case so far from a legal perspective. Let’s start with the background.

2020: Grounds for the war

• Epic Games distributes its highly popular battle royale game Fortnite via the Apple App Store. It generates significant sums of money from in-app purchases integrated into the game.
• Apple, of course, charges a 30% commission when developers sell their products and in-app purchases via Apple App Store. 
• Epic Games updates the Apple App Store version of Fortnite: from this moment, users are allowed to pay Epic Games directly, bypassing Apple’s own payment system and its 30% commission.
• Apple is not happy. It states that the update violates App Store rules (to which every developer agrees when it signs up). Apple subequently removes Fortnite from the App Store.
• Epic Games claims that the decision is unjust and will fight for its interests. the developer starts its court dispute against Apple, stating that the company is stifling market competition.

2021: Epic wins on the merits

Epic wins one from 10 of its requests to Apple. But this one is crucial and the most-wanted: Apple shall lift its rules’ restriction for all developers to:

1. Include in their apps and their metadata buttons, external links or other calls to action that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms other than Apple’s;
2. Communicate with users through points of contact obtained from customers via account registration within the app.

This court order is called an “injunction”.

2023 to 2024: Win is approved, but Apple tries to trick

Appeal and US Supreme courts stated that the initial court injunction is correct. Apple obeys, but: 

1. Imposes a 27% commission on purchases made outside the App Store (including on those made within seven days after users click on external links leading to developers’ sources);
2. Restricts ways in which developers may enjoy non-Apple payment tools.

Epic starts a “subdispute”, claiming that Apple should remove this commission and restrictions and obey the injunction completely.

What happened recently?

In April 2025, Epic won this “subdispute”. In the 80-page order, the court found that Apple had tried to dodge the injunction and that it had done so deliberately for the purpose of maintaining its anticompetitive revenue stream. The judge stated:

1. Apple’s new 27% commission was not justified, considering the facts that: 

   • The previous 30% commission was not tied to the value of its intellectual property.
   • Apple had not applied such a commission for “external” purchases earlier.

2. Apple’s restrictions for developers who are willing to use “external” methods of payments (“full page ‘scare’ screens, static URLs, and generic statements”) are to dissuade users from choosing such methods.

As a result, Apple has dodged the injunction and saved billions of dollars from its revenue stream.

The court said that such dodging of the injunction is a violation of the law. Apple was immediately prohibited from applying any commissions or restrictions that will help it dodge the injunection further.

Moreover, the court found: 

• A member Apple’s c-suite had lied under the oath to court outright (while making testimony in front of the judge in the initial proceeding). This is a potential criminal violation and the court referred this matter to the US Attorney to investigate it. The potential term for imprisonment is up to five years.
• While Apple was appealing the injunction, it had coded activities for dodging the court’s injunction, referring to them as “Michigan” and “Wisconsin” in its internal communications.

The  full text of the court’s decision is available here.

Implications

The 30% at issue is a rent in its essence. When a platform has as many users and vendors on it as possible, and they are able to reach each other within one place, there are consequently no incentives for people to use other platforms.

This is the case of Apple. Once it created the iPhone and App Store for it, developers had no incentive to create apps for other companies.

In the meantime, Google came up with an idea on how to crack this situation using another industry layer. It consolidated other phones’ manufacturers under the single OS: Android, and made Google Play. From then the era of Big Tech competition began, but this is another story.

From this perspective, no matter what the commission’s rate is, if the company is put in such a “platform” position, the rate can be anything.

But the higher the rate, the more difficult it is to prove that such rate is a justified consideration for using the platform’s functions. And that’s the point at which Apple failed in front of the judge.

Moreover, it’s obvious that the newly implemented 27% commission was nonsense for the court’s injunction, considering additional developers’ expenses to use alternative methods of pay. Eventually, developers were to pay the same 30% as before.

Short/mid-term implications

Apple stated that it will appeal this decision. Considering the context, it’s unlikely for Apple to succeed. 

Charging the App Store commission is a crucial piece of income for Apple. In case the upper courts uphold the present decision, Apple will lose billions of dollars in revenue.

A lot of developers will now be encouraged to reconfigure their iOS apps in a way that offers users much lower prices, and it’s not clear yet how Apple will handle this.

In addition, given the accusation of lying to the court, this will stimulate regulators and courts to be more thorough while monitoring and investigating potential violations by Big Tech.

Long-term implications

All disputes happening now in the US are likely to become landmark cases that will shape the landscape for Big Tech’s future. Given many of these companies are based in the US, they will be forced to comply with any decisions against them.

There has been a growing trend of regulatory pressure on Big Tech companies around the world, including in the European Union.

Some recent cases include:

• The US regulator started an investigation into Meta, aiming to reverse its purchases of Instagram and WhatsApp.
• The US regulator has put on pressure to compel Google to break up its advertising and search engines businesses.
• A US court forced Meta to disclose information on the lawfulness of training its AI on scraped data.
• The EU regulator fined Apple and Meta for distorting market competition in the region.
• A failed appeal over the divest-or-ban law saw ByteDance enter negotiations to sell TikTok in the US, which remain ongoing following a number of delays.

A few words on linking the users to external sources

Such a remedy is an example of the so-called “interoperability” of platforms. Implementing it will prevent the platforms from binding users to their own functionality. 

It’s considered to be the one of ways to soften platforms’ monopoly effect: users are being empowered with options on how they want to consume digital content.

What’s next?

As of now, the developers see the injustice — the big commission’s rate entails the notorious restriction of competition. They want to fix it.

It is not yet clear what the industry and governments are aiming for. Do they just want to tame the platforms or reshape the whole system, building interoperable ecosystems with broad options for regular users?

There are still more unpredictable twists and turns to come.