Apple loses Epic fight: app developers can now avoid App Store payments

Apple was just hit with a permanent injunction by the judge in its legal battle with Epic Games, preventing the company from forcing developers to use the App Store's payment system for in-app purchases. This would clear the way for developers to use their own or other third-party in-app payment systems to evade Apple's 30% revenue share policy for all in-app purchases.

The decision, first reported by The Verge's Nilay Patel on Twitter, is a seismic event for the Cupertino-based tech giant. Its App Store revenue structure has been a major profit center for the company, generating a little over half a trillion dollars in revenue last year, according to one study.

Judge in Apple / Epic issues permanent injunction against Apple, developers now allowed to direct customers to other payment systems. Story coming! pic.twitter.com/4vA2Hj7VIZSeptember 10, 2021

The long-standing policy was for Apple to take a 30% cut of all app sales and in-app purchases from any developer who listed their app on its App Store marketplace.

While this has definitely helped many developers publish their apps and so was considered a reasonable trade-off when it was first introduced, developers both large and small have started to chaff under the structure as Apple reaped enormous revenue from other developers products, especially from microtransactions that are key sources of revenue for free-to-play titles.

Epic Games, the makers of the worldwide sensation Fortnite, decided to contest this revenue-share structure by attempting to redirect in-game microtransactions entirely to itself, which ran afoul of Apple who subsequently took Fortnite off the App Store entirely.

This story is developing...