In April, US district court judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled that Apple was in “willful violation” of her 2021 injunction aimed at opening iOS app payments. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has almost entirely upheld that finding.
Epic Games chief executive Tim Sweeney said the decision would “do a lot of good for developers and start to really change the App Store situation worldwide, I think”.
The three-judge panel agreed that Apple’s attempt to slap a 27 per cent fee on developers using external payment options had “a prohibitive effect, in violation of the injunction”.
The appeals court backed the lower court’s view that Apple’s rules on how external payment links could look were overly broad, saying Apple can only require that internal and external options be presented similarly.
It further agreed that Apple acted in “bad faith” by refusing to comply with the injunction, noting internal discussions in which compliant alternatives were rejected. The court also dismissed Apple’s claims that the attorney-client privilege shielded key documents.
While the district court barred Apple from charging any fees on payments made outside its App Store, the appeals court said Jobs’ Mob could still charge a “reasonable fee” tied to its “actual costs to ensure user security and privacy”.
That fee will now be hashed out between Apple and the district court.
Speaking to reporters, Epic Games ' chief executive, Tim Sweeney, said such charges should be “super super minor fees”, more like “tens or hundreds of dollars” per app update reviewed by Apple. That would cover staff checking that links are not scams and lead to “normal fees for normal businesses that sell normal things to normal customers,” he said.
“The 9th Circuit Court has confirmed: The Apple Tax is dead in the USA. This is the beginning of true, untaxed competition in payments worldwide on iOS,” Sweeney said.
Sweeney said some developers have already switched to their payment processors since April, but many waited to see if the ruling would survive an appeal. With that uncertainty gone, he expects “rapid adoption” of outside payments, including Epic’s own web shops launched in October.
He said web payments on iOS “will just become the norm” by the end of next year and that “after years of Apple obstruction, we’re finally going to see large-scale change happening”.
Still, Sweeney said fear is keeping many developers in line. He accused Apple of wielding “infinite power to retaliate” against apps that bypass its payment system by delaying reviews or burying apps in search results.
Sweeney described this kind of “ghosting” as a “totally illegal” use of “soft power” that regulators will need to examine if it continues.
When pitching Epic’s payment tools, he said developers often worry that lost users will wipe out lower fees if Apple turns the screws.
"We’re just too afraid of Apple hurting our business. The sad truth is everybody’s afraid of Apple,” Sweeney said.