IT WAS A surgical operation worthy of the best "Fortnite" players. On August 13th Epic Games goaded Apple into booting its hit game from the App Store. Within an hour of Apple's decision, Epic launched an antitrust lawsuit against the tech giant. Epic's slick parody of Apple's famous "1984" advert now cast its enemy as the oppressive, grey Big Brother. Epic's provocation was to offer users alternative payment methods for in-game goodies. Those who bought 1,000 v-Bucks, the game's internal currency, via the App Store would cough up $9.99. Buy directly from Epic, which would thus avoid the 30% cut that Apple takes from every in-app transaction, and you pay $7.99. This dodge violates the App Store's rules, hence the expulsion. The same day "Fortnite" was removed from Google's Play Store, which serves users of Android phones, for the same reason.
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