Welcome to the continued aftermath of the Epic/Apple lawsuit. When we last left off, Apple was trying to postpone its acceptance of third-party payment methods until it had gone through the appeals process, presumably because it’ll be far harder to appeal the ruling if the company has to accept the anti-steering regulations. Unfortunately for Apple, the court has denied its request and the original December 9th deadline stands, meaning that the company will have to allow third-party payments as originally scheduled.
The anti-steering injunction was the one victory that Epic won against Apple in its lawsuit, essentially barring Apple from forcing all transactions to go through its app store and allowing app developers to point players toward another site for discounts or payments. Apple has until December 9th to comply with the ruling but has indicated that it intends to appeal the loss, also noting that it has no intention of letting Epic’s Fortnite return to the app store any time soon.
