Tough deadline in dispute with Epic: Apple must provide 1.3 million documents

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Apple and game developer Epic Games have long been at loggerheads over revenue sharing – and now the legal dispute looks set to reach a new climax: Judge Thomas S. Hixson ordered Apple to produce 1.3 million documents. And more or less at short notice – depending on whether it is the court's or Apple's point of view.

The legal dispute concerns Apple's 30 percent share of the revenue generated by Epic Games from in-game purchases made by players on Apple devices, provided they have previously downloaded a game from Apple's App Store. Apple stipulates this share for all providers who want to offer their games in the App Store. The two companies are also in dispute in the EU.

Epic continues to sue Apple

However, Epic Games did not agree with this – and quickly installed an external payment service for Apple users in its popular FPS shooter "Fortnite". Apple saw this as a breach of its contract with Epic and removed Fortnite from the App Store. It was the perfect opportunity for Epic to take legal action against Apple's unpopular App Store guidelines. In 2020, the games provider went to court.

Partially successful – External payment service providers now have to let Apple have its way. However, the dispute over Apple's revenue share from Epic's in-game purchases is still raging today. Apple now demands a 27 percent share of every payment made via an external service provider. A decision that Epic continues to challenge in court.

Deadline for Apple until September 30

On August 8, the court demanded that Apple submit all documents showing how Apple came to the decision to demand a share of external payments. The company was to compile these documents and submit them by September 30. Apple initially assumed that this would involve around 650,000 documents.

Apple was to inform the court of the status of its document research every 14 days. Apple last did so on September 26, and informed the court without further ado that there would be more documents after all, more than twice as many to be precise, namely a total of 1.3 million documents.

"Simply not to be believed"

At the same time, the tech company demanded a 15-day extension and did not want to submit the final documents until October 31. The court has a wholly different view, as it made clear in a written order. It is "simply unbelievable" that Apple only became aware of the additional documents in the last two weeks.

The court sees a different problem as the cause: Apple's status reports were simply "not good". The accusation against Apple is that the company knowingly kept the court and Epic Games in the dark about the actual extent of the matter. The court criticizes Apple's actions as "bad behavior."

Is Apple unwilling to cooperate?

The US authority also sees a reason for this behavior. A company like Apple, which has virtually "infinite resources" at its disposal, could easily meet the deadline of September 30 – if it wanted to. However, this may not be the case.

The submission of the documents is presumably of great disadvantage to the Apple Group because they could reveal new problems in dealing with external payment providers, whose admission to the App Store had already been ordered by the court.

There is now no way out for Apple: the company must submit all 1.3 million documents to the court by September 30. It remains to be seen whether and, if so, which documents Apple will hand over to the court in the next few days.

(nen)