In leading off the opening arguments in Epic's long-anticipated bench trial against Apple, the Fortnite studio noted that it was "not suing for damages" or a "special deal." Instead, Epic's counsel said, it was "suing for change, not just for itself, but for all developers."
While "Epic is far from the only unhappy Apple developer and distributor," Epic's lawyers said it just happened to be the one company that could "finally [say] enough to Apple's monopolistic conduct" by "taking on the world's largest company" in court over the matter.
Apple, meanwhile, used its opening arguments to characterize Epic's lawsuit as "just an attack on Apple's 30 percent commission that Epic does not want to pay" and Epic as a company that "has decided it doesn't want to pay for Apple's innovations anymore."
"Rather than investing in innovation, Epic [is] investing in lawyers and PR... to get the benefits that Apple provides for free," Apple said.
Lock-in and the developer bait and switch
Much of Epic's opening argument focused on the idea that iOS users and developers are effectively locked into Apple's mobile ecosystem and that Apple knew from early in the iPhone's history "what it needed to do to lock users in." Epic produced a number of emails from Apple executives intended to demonstrate this argument, including a 2013 email from Eddy Cue regarding how to get users "hooked to the ecosystem."
As Cue wrote to Apple's Tim Cook and Phil Schiller in 2013:
The more people use our stores, the more likely they are to buy additional Apple products and upgrade to the latest versions. Who's going to buy a Samsung phone if they have apps, movies, etc., already purchased? They now need to spend hundreds more to get to where they are today.
Epic said Apple lured developers with an initial promise that the App Store itself wasn't going to be a major profit generator for Apple. Steve Jobs said in 2008 that the company didn't "intend to make money off the App Store," instead using the existence of an app marketplace to increase the value of profitable iOS hardware itself.