A large portion of the previous year has seen a significant uproar from both indie and major league app developers against a number of Apple’s policies and its growing monopoly within the tech sphere.
What however further added flame to the uproar, was the recent controversy surrounding the tech giant’s removing of Epic Game’s wildly popular Battle Royale Fortnite from its app store. The same happened after Epic Games offered a discount on its virtual currency, Vbucks, for purchases made outside of Apple’s domain.
This particular event has since sparked a long drawn out fight between the two corporations, which is yet to be settled completely. The two companies are set to meet in a virtual courtroom in California on Monday to present their cases regarding the Fortnite debacle.
Epic Games’ fight outside the court room has now started to gather support, in the form of a non profit organisation. Music streaming giants Spotify too has come out and criticized the rules Apple has imposed on its app store in recent times. Other companies including Match Group Inc, and Basecamp, have also voiced their opinions against Apple’s significantly high commission rate on apps made available on its store.
Spotify, Epic Games, Match Group, and Basecamp have all come together to join a non profit organization that plans to advocate for regulatory and legal actions against the tech giant’s app store policies.
Apple’s policies surrounding in-app transactions and its commanding of a 15% to 30% commission on app purchases from its store have been the focal point of criticism in recent times. However, Apple argues that this revenue is the only way that allows the organization to create resources for developers, that include over 160,000 technical documents as well as sample code assisting in the building of apps and the imposition of strict anti-piracy law upon apps published on its store.
Based out of Washington D.C and Brussels, the nonprofit coalition, named ‘The Coalition for App Fairness’, aims to implement legal changes in order to put a stop to Apple’s alleged unfair policies, allowing both small and large app developers to publish and flourish freely on a regulated platform.
Recent developments have seen Epic initiating an antitrust lawsuit against Apple in a California-based U.S federal court and Spotify filing an antitrust complaint against the tech giant in the European Union.
Apart from the big names the coalition also includes smaller firms such as Blix, Tile, Blockchain.com, Deezer, Basecamp, along with European delegations including European Publishers Council, Protonmail, and News Media Europe.
Even though the Cupertino-based tech giant has refused to comment on the recent proceedings, individuals aligned with Apple have reinstated their faith with the corporation and stated how the companies making up the coalition don’t speak for the thousands of small app developers empowered by Apple, that form the foundation of the tech sphere.
