Epic Games CEO promises to ‘fight’ Apple over ‘absurd’ changes

It sounds like the latest dispute between Apple and Fortnite-maker Epic Games isn’t over.

Epic has been fighting Apple for years over the company's revenue-sharing requirements in the App Store. While Epic’s antitrust lawsuit against Apple was defeated last year, many of its criticisms were echoed in a different lawsuit filed against Apple in March by the Department of Justice and 17 state attorneys general.

In Europe, meanwhile, the new Digital Markets Act seemingly allowed Epic to launch its own Epic Games Store on iOS, and to bring Fortnite back to the platform, with reduced commissions to Apple. However, Apple supposedly rejected the games store twice over elements it said were too similar to its own App Store, particularly the “install” and “in-app purchase” buttons.

Once Epic went public on Friday with its complaints about Apple’s “arbitrary, obstructive” rejections and said it reported its concerns to European regulators, Apple approved the games store but said Epic would still need to make changes in a future update.

All settled? Not quite. Epic subsequently posted that it was “disputing” Apple, with founder and CEO Tim Sweeney writing that the story had “taken a turn towards the absurd.”

“Apple is now telling reporters that this approval is temporary and are demanding we change the buttons in the next version - which would make our store less standard and harder to use,” Sweeney said. “We’ll fight this.”

Presumably, that means Epic will resist making further changes to its game store. We’ll see whether the company holds firm, and how Apple might respond.