Apple ordered to comply with court’s decision over in-app payments in Epic Games case – By Sarah Perez (Techcrunch) / Nov 9 2021
A federal judge has ruled that Apple can’t push back the deadline to update App Store policies, as previously ordered in the court’s decision on California’s Epic Games v. Apple lawsuit. Though Apple largely won that lawsuit when the judge declared that Apple was not acting as a monopolist as Epic Games had alleged, the court sided with the Fortnite maker on the matter of Apple’s anti-steering policies regarding restrictions on in-app purchases. The court’s original ruling stated that Apple would no longer be allowed to prohibit developers from pointing to other means of payment besides Apple’s own payment systems, but Apple wanted that decision put on hold until its appeals case was decided — a delay that would have effectively pushed back the App Store changes by a matter of years.
Specifically, the September 10, 2021 ruling issued by U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers on the Epic Games antitrust case had ordered Apple to no longer stop developers from:
“…including in their apps and their metadata buttons, external links, or other calls to action that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms, in addition to In-App Purchasing.”
