Apple claims Epic uses the Fortnite lawsuit for marketing, and Tim Sweeney‘s company responded to it.

„Epic started a fire, and poured gasoline on it, and now asks this Court for emergency assistance in putting it out,” Apple‘s filing on September 16 reads. Previously, Epic claimed that Fortnite’s removal from Apple’s App Store (we mean Fortnite: Battle Royale here, not Save the World, although that game is also affected – we discussed it yesterday) was retaliation for Epic challenging Apple’s monopolistic practices.

„For reasons having nothing to do with Epic’s claims against Apple, Fortnite’s popularity is on the wane. By July 2020, interest in Fortnite had decreased by nearly 70% as compared to October 2019. This lawsuit (and the front-page headlines it has generated) appears to be part of a marketing campaign designed to reinvigorate interest in Fortnite. If Epic were truly concerned that it would suffer reputational injury from this dispute, it would not be engaging in these elaborate efforts to publicize it,” Apple added.

Epic countered this argument in a reply filing dated September 18, written by Tim Sweeney, the CEO of Epic Games: „Epic’s actual user engagement data reflecting the actual number of users playing Fortnite (not Google search results) shows Apple’s claim of declining interest in Fortnite to be incorrect. Over the period that Apple cherry-picked for its Google search volume comparison (between October 2019 and July 2020), the number of daily active users on Fortnite increased by more than 39%,” he wrote.

His declaration for Epic also counters a statement in Mike Schmid’s statement for Apple that Epic breached an agreement with Sony in 2018 by launching PlayStation 4 cross-platform play without Sony’s consent. This allegation is false in public information, and Epic wasn’t involved directly in the public pressure for cross-play in 2018, as it was led by Nintendo, Microsoft, and the media. (There was an Epic network error that briefly enabled Xbox One-PlayStation 4 cross-platform in 2017, but Epic immediately fixed it.)

The court hearing will happen on September 28.

Source: PCGamer

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