When the US Supreme Court upheld the court ruling in the Apple vs Epic Games case, I said that the iPhone maker’s response was clearly made in bad faith, and was effectively giving the middle finger to the judge in the case.
The judge has now officially confirmed this view. She has not only directly called out Apple for ignoring her ruling, but said that a senior Apple exec lied under oath, and referred the matter for prosecution …
I’m not a fan of using bold text for emphasis, but I really have to on this occasion to emphasise just how utterly insane and incredible this is:
The judge declared that Apple’s VP of Finance Alex Roman lied under oath in a court of law. Apple knew this and did not comply with its legal obligation to correct the record. The matter has now been referred to the US Attorney for criminal investigation. Roman could literally be sent to jail for this, with Apple also subject to criminal sanctions.
The insane history of this dispute
Epic Games flouted Apple’s App Store rules by introducing its own in-app payment system, bypassing Apple’s 30% commission. That was a blatant breach of Apple’s rules, and the company threw its games out of the App Store. So far, no big deal, a simple civil dispute.
The two companies went to court, and Apple mostly won. That also needs to be emphasised here, because the company could have taken the win – the finding that the App Store is not a monopoly – and gone home happy.
The only area where Apple lost is that Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled that Epic (or any other developer) is allowed to make in-app sales without the iPhone maker taking a cut. Most developers weren’t going to bother, so the financial loss to Apple would have been pretty small. But Apple chose to flout the entire intent of the judge’s ruling, and announced that it would continue to demand commission even on sales made outside the App Store.
That was clearly a ridiculous response. Epic went back to court to accuse Apple of acting in bad-faith, and the judge strongly implied she agreed, and that Apple was lying about its motivation. She demanded that the iPhone maker hand over all its internal documents relating to the decision. When Apple claimed it had not been able to comply by the deadline, a second judge said he too thought the company was lying.
That’s two separate judges saying that one of the biggest companies in the world is probably lying.
But now it’s official: Apple lied under oath
Rogers, the
5 Comments
turtlebro
All thanks to Epic for spearheading this effort. We do not want 30% cut takers in the age of digital distribution. It's parasitic way of making money. Apple (also Steam) does not deserve to earn billions from software they have contributed nothing to. They're akin to digital feudal lords and we must fight this.
ChrisArchitect
[dupe]
More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43856795
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43852145
wowohwow
In the age of floppy disk and CD distribution of software, what was a retailers markup/cut? I imagine, Staples, Best Buy, CompUSA, Office Depot, etc were taking 30%+.
Shelf space, physical distribution, and store operations, etc costs money — but so does bandwidth, security, tech ops, etc of all of these platforms.
Why isn't it ok for a digital store to require a markup to sell?
hilbert42
"The judge declared that Apple’s VP of Finance Alex Roman lied under oath in a court of law. Apple knew this and did not comply with its legal obligation to correct the record.…
…Roman could literally be sent to jail for this, with Apple also subject to criminal sanctions."
Unfortunately, that's hardly likely, nowadays the US justice system hasn't the balls to go that far. Everyone knows Apple is too big and powerful to touch other than to wave a feather at it.
These days governance and democracy first and foremost serve the rich and powerful.
chrischen
Apple's 30% app cut is why we don't have the ability to make websites and web apps appear and operate like an app. Pinning a website onto your home screen to make it seem like an app is a cumbersome process which can't be automated into some "install" button. This is probably intentional to force people to make wrapper apps and thus subject something to the Apple platform fee.
They're also worrying about declining revenues in hardware so they are aggressively shifting to subscription and service fees, to the point of destroying the user experience of the Apple ecosystem. I am almost forced to use iCloud backups because of decades of neglect with offline syncing. Why must I pay monthly for gigabytes of storage to backup my iphone when a single $30 hard drive could do it?
I understand and see the value apple provides in a walled garden. It's not totally useless. It's one of the reasons apps tend to be higher quality in the App Store and the platform is basically free of viruses unlike an "open" platform like Windows. But I also welcome the changes that might make it easier for web based technologies to run freely on iOS.