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I believe the money owed to Apple is a seperate concern, raised from their apparent breach of contract.

At the time Fortnite was available on the App Store, the Apple In-App Purchase mechanism was the only contractually allowed method of purchase, and for the short time Fortnite enabled purchases via other methods, their contract with Apple was breached. As a result, the judge ruled that Apple is owed 30% of that revenue - money they would have gotten had those purchases been made via Apple IAP.

In addition, the judge ruled that Apple was well within their power to terminate Epic's developer relationship and App Store access, because of this breach of contract.

This new injunction only takes place in 90 days time, and doesn't nullify any power Apple has to determine who they wish to allow on their App Store. As a result, they are seemingly choosing to not permit Epic back on the App Store, again, due to their initial breach of contract.

My interpretation of this this new ruling is that Apple isn't entitled to money raised through other payment methods going forward, as likely the App Store developer terms of service will be revised to reflect the new state of the law. However I'm sure this will become clear in due course when we see the new terms.



So it could be just a coincidence that the damages she awarded Apple were specifically 30% of Epic's in-app VBuck sales, the exact same amount Apple would have been entitled to via IAP. I guess that's plausible and I read too much into her selecting 30% of their sales.

But I'm still thinking about how Apple suggested without restricting IAP to Apple's system, they'd have to collect that 30% in a more complicated way. I think you're perhaps right that today's ruling is orthogonal to that, but Apple may well still have that in mind, and be within their rights to impose that?




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