Apple had a legal setback last week when a federal judge in California ruled in favor of Epic Games, which sued the tech giant for violating a court order to stop demanding commission fees for purchases outside of the Apple App Store. In a ruling last week, Apple was found to be in “willful violation” of a 2021 injunction prohibiting it from anticompetitive practices involving pricing. U.S. District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers went so far as to refer the case to prosecutors for a possible criminal investigation. Apple has already filed a notice of appeal.

Apple has already changed its U.S. App Store rules to allow third-parties to link users to their own websites as a purchase option for buying subscriptions or other digital goods. The court specifically ordered Apple not to prohibit such links.

“The App Review Guidelines have been updated for compliance with a United States court decision regarding buttons, external links, and other calls to action in apps,” Apple explains in a May 1 developer news post.

Epic’s 2020 lawsuit centered on the degree of control Apple maintained over developers with products in the App Store. In 2021, the court issued an injunction that required Apple to refrain from disallowing developers from mentioning in marketing materials appearing in the App Store purchasing options other than the Apple-owned site (from which the tech giant’s sales commission was typically 30 percent) and issued its opinion in December 2023.

“After its appeal against the injunction failed, Apple last year started allowing other apps to link out and use non-Apple payment mechanisms, but it still took a 27 percent commission and added what critics called ‘scare screens,’” TechCrunch reports.

Apple continued to limit “the ways that developers could communicate with its customers about out-of-app purchases and used wording that discouraged users from clicking on [their] links,” writes the Los Angeles Times.

The Verge called last Wednesday’s ruling a “stinging rebuke” against Apple and the App Store that included a finding that one of the company’s executives “had lied under oath” and issuing sanctions against Apple “for ‘misuse of attorney-client privilege designations to delay proceedings.’”

“Epic CEO Tim Sweeney and his lawyers argued that Apple was a bully that was striking fear in the hearts of mobile game makers by punishing Epic in forcing ‘Fortnite’ off the App Store,” writes VentureBeat, adding that with last week’s victory it is now “possible that the floodgates are open to bring competition and financial gains for mobile game companies on iOS.”

TechCrunch says that as a result of this recent court decision it is possible that Epic Games’ “Fortnite” “could return to the U.S. iOS App Store as early as next week.”

Related:
Apple Hit with App Developer Class Action After U.S. Judge’s Contempt Ruling, Reuters, 5/5/25
Epic Says Fortnite Is Coming Back to iOS in the U.S., The Verge, 4/30/25
Epic Will Use an EU Account to Bring Fortnite Back to the U.S. App Store, The Verge, 5/5/25
Apple Notice of Appeal for the District of Northern California, 4/30/25