Fortnite will return to iOS after court slams Apple’s “obvious cover-up”
Epic CEO and founder Tim Sweeney said in a Zoom call with press Wednesday night that the company is "going to do everything we can to bring Fortnite back to the iOS App Store next week." That decision comes after a federal district court found late Wednesday that Apple was in "willful violation" of a 2021 injunction designed to allow iOS developers to steer customers to alternate payment processors for in-app purchases.
That 2021 injunction wound its way through years of appellate review until January 2024, when the Supreme Court declined to hear a final attempt by Apple to overturn it. Since then, the District Court for Northern California has been holding a series of evidentiary hearings examining the internal development of Apple's so-called "compliance plan" for the injunction.
In a scathing Wednesday night order, District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers determined that Apple had engaged in a plan to "thwart the injunction's goals," and then engaged in an "obvious cover-up" to prevent that plan from being revealed. Apple's response to the injunction in court has "strained credulity," the judge said, and Apple's conduct has been egregious enough for the judge to refer the matter to the district attorney for Northern California "to investigate whether criminal contempt proceedings are appropriate."
from Gaming – Ars Technica https://ift.tt/iPQ1bIF