Epic Games pays $6 million of unpaid "Apple Tax" to Apple after court ruling

A couple of days ago, the one-year-old Apple vs Epic legal battle was over and the trial was concluded, with the judge ruling somewhat in favor of Apple, although the Cupertino giant was forced to allow redirections to third-party paying systems. Now, 9to5Mac reports Epic has paid the required sum of the 30% of commission of sales the company made bypassing the App Store last year, and it amounts to $6 million.

Epic has now paid $6 million of the so-called 'Apple Tax' to Apple

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney himself has confirmed the paid amount via Twitter and has even joked about it with the Apple Pay logo. The judge has ordered Epic to Pay Apple 30% of the $12,167,719 revenue that the company made last year by bypassing the App Store's in-app purchases system.

A couple of days ago, the game maker has filed an appeal to the court's ruling, despite the judge ruling that Apple should allow third-party payment systems from now on.

It was a long legal battle between Epic and Apple

It all started back in the summer of 2020. Epic Games' popular game Fortnite started including a link to direct payment that was bypassing the App Store rules that required the so-called "Apple Tax" - a 30% fee taken on each purchase via the App Store. Of course, bypassing this payment system meant Epic was breaching the terms and conditions of its developer contract with Apple and not long after that, Apple reacted.

The Cupertino giant removed the Fortnite game from the App Store and then went on to disable Epic Games' developer account when the company refused to comply with the giant's demands. Epic took things to court and filed a lawsuit against Apple, the 30% commission and the monopoly the App Store executed over developers.

The lawsuit continued until September 10, 2021, when Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers made her decision on it and concluded everything in a 185-page ruling. The Judge basically allowed third-party developers to include links for other purchases systems alongside the App Store payment system. Nevertheless, the Judge deemed Epic has breached its contract with Apple and still had to pay the aforementioned amount of money to Cupertino for the money earned by bypassing the App Store rules.

Despite this ruling, Epic is not keen on stopping here, given the fact it then appealed. And not only this: Epic has been fighting on multiple fronts not only against Apple but also against the other alleged monopolist, Google. Recently, the game-making company has filed a complaint against Google, in which the company alleged Google has paid third-party phone makers so that they don't include competitive Google Play app stores on their Android phones.

In the complaint, Epic has stated Google had put in place a program called "Premier Device Program" starting 2019, which basically gave phone makers and their devices a premium status in search thus earning 12 percent share of Google search revenue. The condition to make the Premier Device Program list was to not include any third-party APK installs-capable apps, pretty much - any app store.

According to the complaint, this Premier Program included Motorola, LG, and Chinese conglomerate BBK (which represents companies such as Oppo, Vivo, and OnePlus) who had the majority of their devices in the Premier Program.