Nearly five years after games and software developer Epic Games launched its legal battle against Apple and Google, accusing them of engaging in monopolistic app store practices – CEO Tim Sweeney continues the “epic crusade” against the giants, blasting them as “gangster-style businesses.”
Sweeney’s company won against Google, but for the most part lost to Apple, even though this case is still ongoing regarding an alleged violation by Apple of a component of the ruling favorable to Epic.
“Malicious compliance” is how Sweeney formulated this during a Wednesday Y Combinator event and went on to declare both Apple and Google as “no longer good-faith, law-abiding companies.”
“Crime pays for big tech companies,” he said, and added that this will not change without “much more rigorous” enforcement of laws.
The Epic CEO believes the behemoths’ financial power allows them to continue with lucrative illegal practices, knowing that the fine will be less than the money they would lose by abandoning those practices.
Sweeney continued with other examples of anti-competitive and self-preferential behavior by Apple and Google that affects Epic, and of the the giants’ not-so-subtle scare tactics.
Unlike in the US, in the EU Apple has been forced to allow the Epic Games Store, but users who want to install it are presented with a warning, as are Android users (it would appear, globally).
Google’s warning claims that the Epic Games Store comes from “an unknown source.” This “scare screen,” as Sweeney calls it, causes 50 to 60 percent to abandon installing the store, and the same is happening with Apple users in Europe.
The Epic CEO also accused Apple of other underhanded practices, such as charging fees high enough to dissuade any but the most monetarily successful iOS app developers from distributing via the Epic Games Store.
For the majority of others, this would prove too expensive, he asserted. “Apple would bankrupt them if they did that,” Sweeney said.
In January, Epic announced on its site that up until that point, none of the 100 highest-grossing mobile game developers were willing to distribute their games on the Epic Games Store, and blamed the Core Technology Fee and Apple and Google’s “onerous restrictions and scare screens” for this.
