The Apple v. Epic Games battle is continuing even after a ruling in the court case between both companies. Today on Twitter, Epic Games’ CEO Tim Sweeney alleges that Apple has blacklisted Fortnite from the App Store and the rest of Apple’s ecosystem entirely until the exhaustion of all court appeals.
Apple and Epic’s battle truly began with a lawsuit in 2020. Epic added a new workaround to its App Store port, allowing it to get around the 30% cut that Apple takes off of all app purchases. Apple removed Fortnite from its App Store in response, so Epic sued Apple. The case ended with Apple mostly winning. It’s only penalty was having to give developers a button that allows them to link external payment methods. Meanwhile, Epic had to pay Apple $6 million for profits made after circumventing its 30% cut.
Sweeney plainly tweets that “Apple lied.” He claims that Apple said that it would bring Fortnite back to the App Store should it agree to follow the rules of the ecosystem. Sweeney claims that it turned around on this statement following the court’s ruling.
Just last week, Epic agreed with Apple that we would play by the same rules as everyone else. pic.twitter.com/WOxsbnAFXE
— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) September 22, 2021
In a responding email, Apple made it clear that Fortnite and any other Epic Games title will be blacklisted from the Apple ecosystem until “the exhaustion of all court appeals.” Sweeney mentioned that this could be a five-year process.
After Epic broke signed agreements with Apple and took it to court over it, the latest decision reads like a final power play from Apple. The situation is likely to continue the ongoing drama between the two companies, which had been mostly squashed by the courts.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.