Judge rules that Epic's Unreal Engine, but not Fortnite, should be protected from Apple
Epic's fight against Apple took one of its first twists yesterday, as a judge ruled to partially grant the Unreal Engine-maker a temporary restraining order against Apple.
Epic had been seeking for practically all of Apple's response to its new payment scheme to be paused, returning Fortnite to the App Store after Apple removed it, but didn't get everything it wanted.
This ruling is a pre-cursor to the later suit Epic's pursuing, and Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers immediately made it clear that she wasn't convinced of Epic's plight as regards Fortnite.
While she didn't dispute that Epic's reputation among customers might be suffering during the game's outage on iOS, she pointedly explained that the harm didn't seem irreperable, and that "The current predicament appears of its own making". In fact, she pointed out that by rolling back the new payment system, Epic could return to the previous status quo pending its lawsuit, and Fortnite could operate as before.
However, when it came to the Unreal Engine, which Apple was set to cut off from its developer tools at the end of this week, Rogers sided with Epic, stating that "Epic Games and Apple are at liberty to litigate against each other, but their dispute should not create havoc to bystanders".
In this case those bystanders would be any developer using Epic's hugely popular engine, so you can see her point.
This first statement is an early step in what will be a fairly lengthy legal process, given that a full hearing may take months to conclude, but gives Apple some firm guidance on how to act until a fuller conclusion is reached.
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