Apple Countersues 'Fortnite' Maker Epic Games

Yahoo Finance’s Dan Howley joins the On the Move panel to discuss Apple's countersuit against Epic Games the maker of ‘Fortnite.

Video Transcript

JULIE HYMAN: I feel like you're our boxing correspondent now because of the back-and-forth between them. Apple now counter-suing, right?

DAN HOWLEY: Yeah, Apple is basically counter-suing Epic Games here. And essentially, what's happening is both companies are at a complete impasse, and they want to kind of litigate this issue and kind of determine where Epic stands, as far as if they can re-enter the app store with Fortnite or not. Now, right now, Fortnite is not allowed in Apple's App Store or, by the way, Google's Play Store. We talk a lot about how Apple has banned it, but Google has also banned it, too. And Epic is saying, look, we should be allowed to come back in. So they've filed a motion saying that, you know, while this is proceeding, Apple should be forced to allow a Fortnite to remain within the App Store just as it had been before.

Now, the big thing to take away from this is Fortnite can go right back if Epic Games just agrees to Apple's terms and doesn't include a secondary payment option. The same thing goes for Google's Play Store. But Epic is saying that both companies have a monopoly over their app businesses, and it's unfair to developers to have to pay that 30% cut that they have to pay each time someone pays for an app.

So we're really still stuck in limbo here, and we have to wait to see what the judges say-- or the judge says-- in this case. This may actually determine the future of Apple's App Store, which is a huge revenue generator now. So it's either going to be this, or it's going to be anti-trust regulators. But at some point, we're going to come to a conclusion on the app stores.