According to Apple’s Epic Games case filings, this has lowered industry commissions, while third-party app stores would compromise privacy and security

Ahead of the upcoming bench trial with Epic Games, Apple submitted hundreds of pages of documents with factual findings, including some interesting and previously unknown tidbits about Epic Games.

Epic Games planned its uprising against Apple for at least two years before choosing to blatantly violate Apple’s App Store rules, with Apple’s App Store fees at the heart of the dispute. Epic believes it shouldn’t pay Apple a 30 percent discount to distribute apps on iOS devices, but lawsuits show that Epic itself used to charge much higher fees.

In the 1990s, when Epic initially agreed to distribute games from other developers, it received a 60 percent commission. According to Apple’s documents, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney said at the time that the 60 percent fee that Epic collected was a “fairly favorable royalty,” as most distributors at the time charged a 70 percent commission.

Before digital distribution platforms such as the “App Store” existed, Sweeney noted that it was “so daunting” to sell games through physical locations.

“See, you’ve put a tremendous amount of effort into developing a program. If you have to release it, that’s basically doubling the effort, because of all the sophistication and documentation that goes into it. And unless you’re going to make serious money off of it. that, then it’s not worth it. “

According to Apple, the App Store has “toppled the status quo” and introduced a “hassle-free marketing, distribution and transaction system” for developers and users alike. Apple claimed its model revolutionized payment for developers, who kept 70 percent of the “App Store” instead of paying 70 percent to a distributor for typical retail sales.

In its filing, Apple pointed out that Epic’s own high fees it charged are evidence that deals negotiated before the “ App Store ” were far inferior to the 30 percent cut, while also informing the court of the 15 percent cut fee. percent of those small developers are now eligible for.

Although Epic CEO Tim Sweeney has spent a lot of time malicious Apple on Twitter, he is a fan of Apple’s privacy practices. According to the Apple court indictment, Sweeney said he found “Apple’s approach to privacy superior to Google’s approach to customer and customer data privacy,” and that Apple “is doing a great job.”

Apple alleges that Epic’s lawsuit could have a direct impact on the security and privacy of the iPhone, as customer privacy is one of the reasons Apple wants to monitor apps allowed on iOS devices. Apple plans to soon implement app tracking transparency rules that limit the data developers can collect from users. If alternative app stores were made possible, there would be no rules on the information that could be obtained from ‌iPhone‌ users.

Apple believes sideloading iOS apps would create “unacceptable vulnerabilities” that could expose customers to viruses and malware. Epic at one point apparently considered overriding Apple’s Enterprise certificate policies to get apps on devices without the ‌App Store‌, but Epic’s own engineers had previously expressed concerns about sideloading apps on Android devices.

There were a series of leaks in the binaries for the Fortnite installer after Epic launched it via sideloading on Android devices in August 2018, leading to malware and fraud. And as one programmer noted on another occasion: ‘[o]overall a little concerned about the security aspect of all this, a lot of malware is already doing the rounds masquerading as the Fortnite app. ‘

The court documents provide some clear clues as to why Epic Games wants reduced App Store costs – it doesn’t make any money from the Epic Games Store. Epic lost approximately $ 181 million in 2019 and is expected to lose $ 273 million in 2020. Epic pledged $ 444 million in minimum guarantees to developers, but made only $ 401 million. Epic said it will lose about $ 139 million by 2021, but Sweeney has said it is an investment to grow the business.

Apple claims that Epic is funding the “Epic Games” Store through other parts of the company, such as Fortnite, which are more profitable.

There are many more details on how ‌Epic Games‌ planned its attack on Apple and Google, which can be found in the lawsuit enclosed below. We will also be sure to hear additional information when the two companies meet in court on May 3.

Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, and several other Apple executives will testify, as will Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, and executives from Facebook and Microsoft. Former Apple CEO Scott Forstall will also be called as a witness by Epic.