- Hello, and welcome to a
breaking news edition of This Is.
Fortnite has been banned, the
end of Fortnite as we know it.
How could they possibly take away
the world's most popular game?
Well, it's not quite that simple.
- I'm okay with Fortnite--
- No, no, no, that can't
be the end of our video.
Okay, so what's happened
right now, is that
basically Epic and Apple
are playing chicken.
So as of right now, as we're recording,
Fortnite has just been banned
and removed from the iOS App Store,
that means there's no Fortnite on iPhone,
no Fortnite on iPad.
I guess they can't take it off of the Mac
since you can just download that directly,
but they have pretty much
completely been banned from the platforms.
And the reason why, well, okay,
Epic we're kind of asking for it.
- Yeah, so basically they have been doing
direct transactions within the
app, bypassing the App Store.
If you don't know what any of that means,
basically Apple takes, what, a 30% cut
off of all the transactions that happen
off apps that you get from the App Store.
So that they take their own cut.
And with Epic Games bypassing that
and making 100% of the money
and not giving any of it to Apple,
of course, Apple wasn't
particularly happy about that.
- So what they did was they hid inside
the most recent Fortnite update for iOS,
a little thing that they enabled remotely,
where essentially when you
went to go buy V-Bucks,
which was of course the
currency of Fortnite,
instead of just seeing the normal thing,
in-app purchase, blah blah blah,
buy it through the App Store.
Instead it gave you an option to get
more V-Bucks for the same money
if you go direct through Epic
and then a little popup would show up,
you put in your credit card,
you sign in all that kind of stuff.
Now, as I probably don't need to say,
that is not allowed whatsoever
in the iOS App Store,
they want you to use the
in-app purchase screen,
which I'm sure there are
valid reasons for that
for like payments and stuff,
but the most important thing is,
is it that means that Apple,
and of course Google at that same token,
get 30% of whatever
purchases that you make
on the App Store.
Now, a lot of developers have
been very unhappy about this
for a long time, but Epic has straight up
just baited it Apple into this.
And sure enough, a few
hours after they did that,
they have been removed from the App Store.
In fact, actually you have an iPhone,
can you actually look to see what happens
when you try to search Fortnite right now?
- Nope.
- Nothing, it's gone.
- There's an app here
called dances from Fortnite.
No, but this is a very
important the thing though,
because as you said, a lot
of people are not happy
with the way that Apple
has been doing things
with the cuts that they've been taking.
And because of that, I think Epic Games,
maybe this is just a
stance that they're taking.
I mean, it could just be a petty thing,
but in the grander story, Epic
Games is kind of a linchpin.
- Yes.
- They have a very important
position on the App Store,
they've been using it for years.
In fact, Apple has been so
kind as to point that out
in their argument for why they removed.
- How many times have we
seen like Infinity Blade
and other Epic games at
the actual like App Store,
like the launch of phones.
So this is not the first time Fornite
and Apple and Google
have fought head to head.
I don't know if you remember,
but when Fortnite first came to Android,
you couldn't download it
off of the Play Store,
you had to go side load the app,
Google weren't really a big fan of that.
And they did that for a while
but eventually Fortnite caved,
Epic brought Fortnite into the
Google Play Store directly,
which meant that they
of course had to pay 30%
of all of that money, which is tough.
So like, okay, I'm curious,
so we have a huge, huge,
different legal document.
So as soon as they banned--
- That's the actual thing.
- 65 pages.
So essentially Epic knew
exactly what they were doing.
So the second that they got banned,
they hit Apple with a 65 page document,
basically suing them for, I
mean, I can read some of this.
So they're suing them
for the Apple monopoly
of the iOS app distribution market,
competition in the sale of mobile devices,
cannot discipline Apple's conduct
to the iOS app distribution, I
mean, there's literally nine,
10 counts of California Cartwright Act,
California unfair competition law.
Look, there's zero doubt.
Epic knew exactly what they were doing.
They got banned from the
App Store on purpose.
They push this update secretly,
they flipped the switch,
of course, everyone started talking about,
of course Apple saw it and
Apple following their own rules,
rightfully or wrongfully
were like, yo, no,
nuke, delete, remove Fortnite.
Which is funny to think that Apple
is one of the very few
companies in the world
that have the nuke Fortnite
button at their fingertips.
- Look, I don't exactly agree
with the way that Apple's doing things.
But look, I'm not a fan of Fortnite.
I find Fortnite kind of annoying.
Apple, you're kind of making me feel like
I'm a bad person for wishing
this, but at the same time,
pretty dick move.
- So they've actually,
they were so far prepared
that they have a little teaser in the,
is it the party mode I believe?
- Yeah.
- Essentially explaining this.
I haven't actually seen
it, you want to watch it?
It's 198Fortnite.
- Today we celebrate the anniversary--
- Oh, that looks familiar.
Oh, this looks very familiar.
- [Apple] For years they
have given us their--
- Oh my god.
(laughing)
- It's a straight rip of the 1984 ad.
- Those sly dogs, man, those sly dogs.
- Our control.
This power is ours and ours alone.
- Oh my God.
- This is shot for shot the 84 ad.
- I actually really wants
someone to play it side by side.
- Look at this, Epic Games
has defied the App Store Monopoly.
In retaliation Apple's blocking Fortnite
from a billion devices.
Joined the fight to stop
2020 from becoming 1984.
Free Fortnite, #FreeFortnite.
Dude, okay, look.
Epic 100% knows what
they're doing with this.
And really as gamers, we all
have to kind of make a decision
on what side we come down on, right?
Because there's absolutely
going to be a long legal battle.
And if you're Apple, you're
gonna fight this hard
because think about it, if Epic do this,
if Epic are allowed to
just sell their own stuff
and not give them a cut, you
can make the argument that
why is Apple paying to host the games
and for the updates and
all that kind of stuff
if they can't get anything.
I mean, if they're arguing that Epic wants
like a 10% split instead of 30%,
I think that may be more reasonable
but what's the end game here?
- Look beyond the Epic Games thing though.
Again, as I mentioned before,
this is not just for Epic Games.
There are a lot of people that are annoyed
at how much of a cut Apple takes.
In fact, something that's
a little more relatable
to what I've been doing recently.
I've been getting into virtual YouTubers
and YouTube Super Chat.
- We all know.
- But here here's something
that I found out though.
So it's not just games and apps
that you buy on the App Store, right?
Every transaction that you do
through iTunes and the App
Store counts toward that 30%.
So if you say, use the
YouTube app on your phone
and do a Super Chat,
say you want to help your
favorite creator out, right,
you wanna donate to their
tip jar in the chat.
The big problem there is
that you're not giving them
that full 100% cut or
that a 100% transaction,
you're giving them minus
30% of whatever you donated,
which is kind of scummy.
- I'm really curious to see
how this plays for us as,
I was about to say, avid Fortnite gamers.
I'm not going to count myself in that.
- Speak for yourself, Mr. Austin Evans.
- For us who are interested
in mobile gaming,
what this means is for
the foreseeable future,
there is no more Fortnite on iOS.
If you still have the game,
I assume it will work
for some amount of time.
I don't think they can
remove it from your phone
if you already have it
or your iPad or whatever,
but essentially if you
are a Fortnite gamer
or your little cousin Timmy is,
then iOS is no longer an option.
We'll see how it plays out
with the Google Play Store.
It's a little weird that they're
completely targeting Apple here
because the Google store has
basically the exact same rules.
Although I guess to be fair on Android,
it's a more open platform,
you can side load it at the very least.
This is gonna be very interesting to see
what happens with this
emergency breaking news
of Fortnite being banned.
You know, 2020's been a weird year.
I don't think the thing that gets us
to do an emergency This Is
episode is Fortnite being banned
is like toward the top of my list here.
- This doesn't affect me at all.
- Well, you know what does affect you?
When people subscribed to This Is
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So make sure to subscribe here on This Is
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like not Fortnite gameplay.
- This also doesn't affect me.
