Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney says his highly publicized court fight against Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) and Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) is really about the little guy – the tinkering entrepreneur looking to create the next big thing.
Sweeney, who leads the video game developer behind the global hit "Fortnite," said his ongoing legal battle is about entrepreneurs – people like himself, a former coder at his parent’s house who would go on to build a video game empire in Cary.
If Epic wins its suit, “then Android and iOS will both be open platforms,” he said in a recent interview after being named Triangle Business Journal's 2021 Businessperson of the Year.
“They will have stores competing with each other for customers’ business, they’ll be competing on price,” he said, adding that, without any ties in place, “it creates opportunity for all of the companies that have been locked out.”
Specifically, Epic is challenging the restrictions the companies have on apps regarding their payment processes. With Fortnite, Sweeney’s team tried to bypass Apple’s payment system, and got blocked from the App Store in the process – leading to litigation.
Epic initially filed lawsuits in 2020. After a trial last spring, a federal judge decided in favor of Apple on all but one count – and both companies are appealing the ruling.
The suit against Google is still ongoing.
If Epic loses, Sweeney sees a more dystopian future, where the big tech companies “will control everybody’s online lives in minute detail in the future.”
He sees Apple – whose iOS supported about 10 percent of "Fortnite" users at the game’s peak, according to Sweeney – as a monopoly holder, particularly in developing economies where smartphones can be the only computing hardware for most consumers. “You can’t afford a PlayStation, you can’t afford a big TV, you probably don’t have a personal computer, but you have a smartphone, and Apple and Google impose absolute control over all of these people,” he said.
And it’s a bigger fight than just two technology companies. Sweeney said that, if Apple and Google “get away with it,” more platforms will follow.
“There will be a small number of companies dictating the terms of all commerce,” he said. “And they work together.”
Sweeney said his concern about the issue started about six years ago, “when it became clear that smartphones were turning into a platform for a billion users, and Apple and Google had no intention of relinquishing their iron grip over it.” So Sweeney tried to start conversations to urge a different approach.
But he was largely ignored. He spoke to various people, he said. Epic was partnering closely with Apple at the time, so meetings were frequent. He even sent Apple CEO Tim Cook a personal email – but said he never got a response.
