What team are you corporate fanboys on? - Results (12 votes)
Team Apple & Google
16.67% (2 votes)
2
Team Epic
0% (0 votes)
0
"Let Them Fight"
83.33% (10 votes)
10
Says Epic's mainly after "tremendous monetary gain and wealth".
Google has struck back against Epic in the ongoing antitrust litigation between the companies. This countersuit, which has to be seen in the context of Epic's other major legal fights (most notably against Apple), centres around Project Liberty, a 2020 scheme whereby Epic surreptitiously added alternative payment methods to the Android and iOS versions of Fortnite and then sued Google and Apple and launched a PR campaign intended to get the public on its side.
Epic says, essentially, that these big platform-holders are operating monopolies and, as such, they should be forced to allow developers to use their own payment systems in apps.
The first judgement in the Epic vs Apple case is complicated, and currently being appealed. Essentially, the courts rejected all of Epic's arguments except for a single, fairly important one: that Apple should allow developers to link to alternative methods of in-app payments. This is what's being appealed by Apple, while Epic is appealing everything else, and resolution seems a long way off. What is the meaning of the word button, anyway?
Google has a much stronger starting hand than Apple, inasmuch as it doesn't operate such a closed system as iOS in the first place: Android users or developers are not forced to use Google Play in order to download or distribute apps (bypassing Google Pay's payment mechanism is a big part of this suit). Google's lawyers argue that Android "gives app developers and smartphone consumers more openness and choice than any other major competitor."