Software giant Microsoft has stepped into the ring and taken the side of Epic Games in its fight against Apple. This makes for a more intense legal tussle between Microsoft and Epic at one corner and Apple (and possibly Google) at the other.
The battle arose when Epic Games pushed an alternative payment method for its highly-popularly Fortnite game, providing a bypass of Apple and Google’s payment system to deprive both of them of commission.
Apple and Google responded instantly by pulling the game out of Apple App Store and Google Play Store respectively.
Epic took legal action against these moves and Microsoft has entered the ring.
In a court declaration, Kevin Gammill, General Manager of Gaming Developer Experiences at Microsoft said that Apple’s move “will place Unreal Engine and those game creators that have built, are building, and may build games on it at a substantial disadvantage.”
Epic uses Unreal Engine to build its game. Switching tools and platforms would cost a bomb and impact 250,000 million Fortnite players around the world.
“Developing a game using different game engines for different platforms may be prohibitively expensive and difficult,” he added.
Entelechy Asia 