Asmongold TV - Epic v. Apple case just changed gaming forever | Asmongold TV

Episode Date: July 20, 2025

Epic v. Apple case just changed gaming forever Asmongold show for all of his stream highlights, competitions, reactions & more. -------------- ---- Keywords: gaming takes, streamer reactions, online gaming, game reviews Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's story is actually going to tangibly impact you. So for five years, there's been a battle waging at the highest levels of the games industry. It's massive. It's between Apple. It's between Epic. And it's around the principle of fairness. And the big news today is that Apple just lost. But they didn't...

This is a huge fucking W. Massive fucking W. Because basically Apple and Google have a duopoly over all apps on all smartphones. and Epic was suing them over that and Epic won. This is huge. I didn't make a video about this or talk about this at all. I forgot why,

but I'm actually like so happy this happened. Lose because Epic Games outmaneuvered them or any kind of insane gigabrain play from Tim Sweeney. No, they lost because in the words of the judge presiding over this decision, Apple leadership, quote, outright lied under oath. And in deciding not to comply with legal injunctions,

Tim Cook, quote, chose poorly. It's an ominous thing for a judge to be... He chose poorly, Jesus Christ. He's saying to you. This, though, is a dramatic case. It has impacts that will reverberate across the entire games industry. And honestly, far wider than that,

meaning it truly will impact everyone who watches this video. Here's all this started. So Tim Sweeney is a man on a mission. And it's a mission that's cost him and his company more than a billion dollars over the last five years. It's fair to say that he's pretty committed.

Now, it stands to make them over 10 billion, or probably more than that. Five years ago is when he decided that Apple and Google's exclusive storefronts on their mobile platforms were in fact unreasonable monopolies. Yes. His opinion. Essentially, he says... Yes, bro. Yes, I fucking agree with this so hard. I was so happy to see this. They don't earn their 30%. Now do it to MasterCard and Visa. This is the exact logic they need to elaborate.

Apply to MasterCard and Visa. Holy shit. And fee, rather they impose it. And that because of that, they're restricting how developers could make money and what sort of deals that they could actually offer to consumers. So what he decided to do was force their hand. So he started something called Project Liberty. And here's how it worked.

Fortnite suddenly got an option where users could buy currency directly from Epic. Right? Directly not through your Apple Payment or Google Payment thing. That, of course, meant that Apple and Google immediately booted Fortnite because it did break their store policies. And this is exactly what Tim Sweeney actually wanted. He wanted his game. The ironic thing about this, and this is very clever by Fortnite, is that this commercial was made by Apple. It kicked off, and we pretty much know that because Epic immediately filed lawsuits that they had been preparing. Very clever.

And these were designed to force the stores to change those policies. Now, in the case of Google, it actually went so much better than any of us, could have expected. Evidence actually emerged that certain developers like Activision had been paid not to rock the boat and that they deleted documents and were broadly proven to have acted unfairly. What a surprise. What a surprise that the duopoly by two massive companies was actually propped up by a bunch of corruption. Who could have ever guessed? A lost in all counts as determined by a jury. And what's this here? It's actually much more impactful than this video is saying, I'm an app developer and prior to this lawsuit, you charge 30% no matter what, even if you are below

one million in sales. Yeah, no, I understand. This is a massive change. And remember I was complaining about this for a while and people were saying, oh, we'll just build your own. Nope. Don't need to now. The platform is open. Yeah, it's an antitrust market. Exactly. New stores and Google have appealed. It was a complete whim for Epic. But their fight against Apple is an entire new story. Things have begun to look quite bad for Epic. You see, the Apple outcome of that initial trial, the original one, was an almost complete defeat for Epic Games. They basically could not prove, prove being the emphasis word there, that any kind of monopoly or unfair action was going on. But there was what was section. An injunction was placed against

Apple, and this was to end anti-steering provisions. You might think, what is anti-steering? Well, it's actually pretty simple. So basically, it meant that Apple could no longer prevent developers from directing users to make purchases outside of the store. So basically steering you the customer somewhere else. Yeah. So as an example, that would be buying V-Bucks in Fortnite through a web client rather than their Apple's purchasing system, which would thus avoid Apple's 30% cut.

Right. Now, at the time, the judge said that Apple should be entitled to something, but that they can't force people to use their in-app purchase systems. Apple then spent three years appealing and, you know, it's Apple. They can afford lawyers, but they really got nowhere on that front. Fuck them. That's what you get. When that same judge came back, and filed a new injunction against Apple

for their behavior in the last three years. And this one truly is remarkable. And depending on how things shake out, there could even be a criminal. Would this also affect Steam? No, it won't affect Steam because Steam doesn't have a monopoly that they can exercise

in the same way that Apple and Google can exercise their monopoly. If Steam was 95% of the entire gaming market, then yes. But the big problem is that So the issue is not that this is happening. The issue is that it's happening and nobody else has access to the market without using this.

So like, for example, like you have dozens of other launchers that an individual can use that's not like Steam. You also have individual company launchers. You have the Epic's launcher, the Epic Games launcher. You have good old games. So there are so many other instances where Steam is effectively, like they don't have a monopoly the same way Apple does. It's just that simple. This is antitrust monopolies.

That's the reason why it's bad. It's not even bad because of what they're doing. It's bad because they're doing it and nobody can say no. There's nowhere else to go to do it. That's the difference. So it wasn't just for a lack of compliance with the original order, but for contempt of court. Just you should be frowned upon. So much so that they've been referred to the U.S. Attorney's Office to

consider criminal contempt proceedings. That would be dramatic. Now, the judge said she was not pleased that Apple implemented new costly fees around off-app purchases, where basically they were effectively replacing one anti-competitive process with another, meaning of course, you know, devs lose, but also us customers lose. This is another very big component to it, is that the customers, it is ultimately, like, what should the law do?

The law should make it to where customers and the most amount of people have the most fair and equitable ability to do business and to receive products at a reasonable price. That is what consumer protection laws are made to do. The fact is that Apple was actively working against that. They are actively working against that through lobbying. They are actively working against that through getting these different cases, you know, fighting these cases. and they're ultimately trying to make you spend more money the consumer so they can get a percentage of that money. Well, they were doing all that.

They were also misleading the court over what they were doing. Here's a quote. That it thought this court would tolerate such insubordination was a gross miscalculation. As always, the cover up made it worse. Man. For this court, there is no second. This is the United States District.

Oh, my God. The bite of the apple. Damn. G-G-G-G, Judge. Quite the zinger. So she laid out then some clear rules. These are practices that Apple are banned from. Number one, imposing a fee in purchases made outside an app.

That means that they have no reason, therefore, to track those purchases. Wow. What means mean outside an app? Ban number two. Sending conditions on how devs can direct users outside of an app, including restricting how links work. Basically, you know, those design anti-patterns that are just trying to get you, the consumer, to clearly do something by, you know,

making a link look weird or a misleading design, that sort of thing. A third, depending certain types of app from directing users to outside purchases, and finally, using, quote, emotive language to persuade consumers to remain in the in-store purchase system, basically scaring people who don't know better and, well... Something like where it comes up with like a red warning box and it says, warning, you might be leaving this store and your computer could be vulnerable, so they can't go and say that. I actually seen Apple do some more things, saying,

you can go and make a purchase, not using the App Store, but, you know, the App Store is very secure and very safe, which to an average person who's not tech savvy could basically look like it's Apple saying, hey, you could get scammed if you don't click this link. P.S. This link gets us lots of money, too. And of course, the reason why these things are banned is, well, because Apple had been doing all of these things. That's what's led to this old case. Now, in response, they have now began complying and appealing. It'll be a little. be interesting to see how malicious. See, this is, this is, you can just do things. These companies have no power. The government has all the power. And if enough people get together, we can just make the companies do what we want. That's the truth. And if they don't do it, we put them in jail. That's it. It's literally it. And you support people to do that, and that's it. Never ask for permission, ask forgiveness? Well, they're going to need forgiveness now. Gouchad, we the people, yeah, there's no reason for the, for citizens to put up with this. The EU has already,

the EU is way ahead of us on this kind of stuff. And I think that they definitely are much more tech savvy and they have better consumer protections than the US does. And we need to catch up to the EU. Their compliance is, I imagine it will be as malicious as is humanly possible without getting an even more trouble. But all of this is happening while the rest of the industry is licking its lips. Some developers, already had updates to go on this. Spotify were a major one. They framed this as a huge consumer win,

which in fairness, I would say it absolutely is. Now we can do insane things like manage our subscriptions in an app. We can use different payment options and we can see cost. Think about how much money Apple's losing with this. Probably billions of dollars. You can now buy Kindle books in the Kindle app. Patreon memberships are no longer marked up an iOS to counteract store tax and lots of things. But of course,

let's bring it back to Tim Sweeney and Epic Games. So the Epic Game Store mobile version already existed as of last year, but now they are really ramping things up. Within a week of the ruling, Epic announced their web store fee would drop to 0% for your first million in revenue with that starting this June. That's obviously pretty awesome for a dev. Plus, much like they have done with the Epic Online Services stuff, what they've done with the store is they've built a solution that people can use

regardless of platform. So be it at Google, be at Apple, anything. But more than that, it doesn't need to be the literal Epic game store. That's because web shops can basically run... Is that the trailer park boys? Their infrastructure and that will let any developer go outside Apple's payment system with no fuss. Yes, Tim Sweeney's definitely taken this one personal and you know what? I'm here for the drama.

Anyway, he should. And also, like, I'm glad, like, I mean, Epic has done things that I've, like, disagreed with in the past. Like, especially, like, the way that they incentivize their launcher. And I even, by the way, just so you guys know, I was into trenches. I met a guy at an industry function that worked at Epic. And I complained to him about every problem that you guys have at the Epic Game Store. I brought it right to him. And I said, here's my phone number.

You want to text me? I can help you fix this. Listen, this is not good. Nobody likes this. It's annoying. Gamers hate this shit. And so that was it. I just want to let you know that I put the word in.

I did my best. is great for devs, but players are also being incentivized here where you're going to get 5% reward points through purchases on those shops and the Epic Game Store, but that's boosted to 20% until the end of August. So that essentially is the big clap back against Apple. But there is the other thing, the Fortnite. So Tim Sweeney has proposed that Fortnite can return to app stores within weeks, like super quick, provided Apple allows them to do so. He also said he'll drop all litigation as part of a peace plan provided Apple roll out this... Whoa, he's actually putting... Oh my God. He's really playing some bullshit, huh?

Yeah, he's just putting it down. Policy worldwide. And instead, as of the time of writing recording this video, Apple had that, you know, went and blocked the Fortnite submission. Now, of course, all of this legal maneuvering so far is only in the U.S. The current policy implementation on Apple's site only applies in that region right now. Fortunately, though, for those of us benefiting from EU rules, we've already had some things for months already. See, this is the thing, right? Is EU is so far ahead of us with this?

People can't stop it. An absolute bomb was dropped in the industry in March of this year when both Google and Apple were found to be in breach of the Digital Markets Act by the EU Commission. Oh, really? How interesting. And this is pretty damn big stuff. They can absolutely sting these companies. So with Google, it was for anti-steering practices, and Apple was for blocking third parties from interfacing with their systems.

That's right. This follows last August. Yep, told you we'd come back to that, ruling that Apple had to open their platform up to alternative stores, and another breach from Apple in April of this year, also on steering. Oh, in that last case, they also faced a cool little 500 million euro fine. Just a little, just a 500 million, just to let you know, like, yo, by the way, you know, like, we know what you're doing, right? It's not a bit, not a lot, but, you know.

What was absolutely flagrant breaches of the law. Apple are obviously appealing because that's what you do in your company, but there's a clear thing. There's a clear trend. The tide is absolutely shifting. Now, it's not going to happen in all regions, but we are seeing. The reason why the tide is shifting is because more and more people, are getting old enough and inside of the voting base who can understand how this unfair monopoly exists and they're supporting candidates and policies that are tech savvy. So the big problem that we

have right now is that especially in government, like you have two problems. Number one, you have politicians that are bought and paid for, which is the real problem. That's the main big problem. But the second problem that we have is that you have a tremendous amount of people that work in government that don't really have a functional day-to-day understanding with how technology works because they don't use it the same way that we do because they're like 75 years old. So they didn't grow up with it the same way that I grew up with it or you grew up with it or anything like that. And so as we have as those people retire and leave the government and new people come in and replace them, you can see these companies easily having these

rules being put on them much faster. And every single year, the tide turns, and it will begin turning faster and faster and faster. Now it's millennials? Yeah, exactly. I'm so glad this is happening. I've been waiting on this for a long time. Regulation over major platforms to protect consumer interests

from companies who otherwise would control them. So between that and I guess a billionaire slap fight led by Tim Sweeney, well, look, we should take these wins when we can get them. Not to bring up an old drama, and it is a bit of a different story, but I suppose a little bit like how Hulk Hogan versus a gocker was, in fact, Peter... Bro, Peter Thiel doing that, ultimate gamer move. Absolutely fucking based.

I remember whenever he did that shit and he shut down that entire fucking website. Yeah, that was so good. So basically, Peter Thiel was like, uh, he was like a made PayPal and you know he's like a well-known like you know super rich billionaire guy right and so uh he got the fact that he was gay exposed by Gawker but he couldn't do anything about it oh he's in planter now i i didn't know that uh but anyway um but yeah he wasn't he was in PayPal as well and so uh Hulk Hogan though did have a case where they leaked a sex tape i think of Hulk Hogan and Peter Thiel bankrolled the entire fucking lawsuit and killed Gawker.

I remember when that happened, bro, like I was so happy. This is Gawker. You know, this is all kind of billionaire slapfights. Now, the thing with Tim Sweeney, right, he does have good principles. There are good principles that he talks about, right? And yes, it's good. He's trying to hold Apple to those. But that does not make Tim Sweeney automatically on your side.

Sometimes it just so happens that we're aiming at. the same target. Now, he will end up benefiting from this massively and in a financial way. And of course, that's because his company is the one building the wraparound solutions that power these out-of-app purchases. And that's really big. And that means that we can appreciate the consumer good that this does. We absolutely can. And the work that the regulators are doing to break down these walled gardens. And in an ideal world, right, once the walled garden is so big and so ubiquitous, you might have to, you know, restrict

the freedom of Apple to go and run a monopoly because not only will it be good for consumers, it will also be good for competition. Yes, exactly. And it's most importantly good for everybody. The only people that it's good for now is Apple. That's Apple platform. It's too large.

Yeah. And absolutely. I also do think, you know, standard oil gets broken up. Who's left with the money to gobble up all the assets? Oh, pretty much the same people. So there's always that thing then where you can have these good pro-consumer regulations, but it's the incumbents with the resources who are immediately able to get around them or exploit the new opportunity and epic games basically, you know, doing its store as a

back end to do payment providing for everybody else. Well, while it is good because it means there is more competition, it also does disproportionately benefit Tim Sweeney. So Tim Sweeney. That's fine. If somebody else benefits, but everybody else does at the same time, that's a win-win situation. Yeah. You know what? Okay. You have led to a domino event that I think is absolutely good for consumers and I think it's good for developers. But that does not mean we will not be critical.

Apple Games, Apple PCL. And on the topic of the good guys being, let's just say, a little bit rumbly. Okay, we have to talk about Capcom. And the good news is you can actually watch that video right now. Oh. A link is about to replace my face on the screen. Yeah, I'm actually really glad that Belliore made a video about this. I saw this happen and I never really talked about it when it did happen.

It happened like almost a month ago, I'm pretty sure, maybe at least a couple of weeks ago. And it was a massive, massive issue. I missed that video? I'm not going to watch it right now. I was going to do some other stuff right now. But yeah, that's really the way I feel about it. This is a huge, huge thing. And I think it also sets a precedent.

I really hope that, I hope that this opens. opens up a conversation about how it's problematic that MasterCard and Visa effectively control the same duopoly with, what do you call it? They control the same duopoly with the payment processing because they do the exact same thing. And they make decisions based off of, oh, well, we don't think this is okay or not. Okay, well, if you don't think this is okay or not, and it's not breaking the law, then you've effectively removed an entire company from the market by just the nature of your company. You can't do that, right? That's not good for a free market to have a couple of people that just control the entire thing, especially whenever it's such an important part of the

pipeline. So I really hope that this logic is applied to the other companies like this as well. I'm very happy about this. Isn't Steam at risk now with this? Steam is at risk now with this, but that's a good thing. Number one, it's a good thing because it's good for customers. And again, like things that are good for customers are the main things that matter. Link it again. Yeah, give them a like because I'm very, very happy about it. Yeah, extremely happy about it. Japan's currently suffering because of Visa. Well, that's, I mean, that's Japan's laws, right? I mean, like, I don't know really what else besides that. Google is next. Yeah, definitely. Support Steam. Boycott the rest. Steam is never at risk because it's actually

good. The difference with Steam is that steam doesn't operate a monopoly. Like, for example, like, I can just pull up this, right? Like, let's say I want to play what? weathering waves. Okay, so I want to play weathering waves. I can play weathering waves on Steam or I can play it on the official launcher and it's very easy for me to do that. The difference with the Apple Play Store and the Google Play Store is that they create a bottleneck to where it's almost impossible to get any apps from anything else besides that or on Epic. Yeah, exactly, right? And I think, yeah, I had it on Epic games as well. That's the reason why they're bad. And so like the problem with, I mean, like, I would agree with you that Steam is an issue if Steam was the only player on the market, but they're not.

And there are tons of other people that have their own markets as well. And so Steam doesn't need to be regulated because it's not able to exercise a monopoly. What about game consoles too? I think that you could, I think there probably could be an issue with that, but it just depends on what happens, right? And Apple's moving to buy Unity, that can be very dangerous. I mean, I don't know, maybe, right? I mean, I have no idea. The difference with a, also, with Steam is that you can sell your stuff elsewhere and link it externally, but you cannot sell it for cheaper using Steam's infrastructure. I don't know, I don't know about the nuance to that. So I just can't really comment on that. I can't talk about that too much, right? Talk about Nintendo. Well,

Nintendo, see, here's the difference is that Nintendo doesn't own a monopoly on video game companies, on video game consoles. So, like, there are plenty of people that own an Xbox and plenty of people that own a PlayStation and plenty of people that own a PC. So the difference is that where, in these other cases, Apple and Google pretty much control the entire pipeline. That's not the case with computers or sorry, with phones, or with game consoles, Jesus Christ, with game consoles. So that's the big difference there.