A key Ben Thompson takeaway from Apple’s “win” in the court of appeals in their case versus Epic — specifically on the anti-steering provision (aka the barring of apps from linking out to the web for sign-ups/payments):
In fact, it did hold up under appeal, and that means there are meaningful changes coming to the App Store. First, the Appeals Court agreed that the standard for a UCL violation was different than for a federal antitrust violation, and that Apple violated that standard. Second, the Appeals Court ruled that given every app developer could potentially link to the Epic Games Store that every developer was affected by Apple’s prohibition, not just Epic.
This is a very big deal! It certainly seems to me that, barring an en banc appeal and corresponding injunction, and beyond that the Supreme Court, that Apple’s anti-steering provisions are now illegal throughout the United States. Moreover, this illegality extends to all apps — both games and everything else.
My read back in 2021, after the first ruling on this case, was that while Apple did indeed “win” most of the arguments, they lost a very key one. The one above. They won the battle, but didn’t realize the war in which they were fighting, as I put it at the time:
My read is that Apple did win — *exactly what everyone always knew they would win*. But in winning that battle, they actually lost something far more important. There is no way around it: the judge’s order to stop App Store anti-steering is a big one. And seemingly one Apple did see coming given the Japanese settlement a few weeks back. But this is still a major blow because it both continues and accelerates the boulder rolling down the hill of real reforms to the App Store.
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Epic, I think, sees that. They’re coy about it, but my suspicion is that they’re a lot smarter about all of this than they’re letting on. And that we’ll only find that out well after the fact. After the App Store has been majorly reformed by Epic’s “losses” here.
As I’ve said before, this is some Sun Tzu shit.
And I’m really not sure Apple sees this. They’re failing to read the room and more importantly, the courtroom. They’re going to interpret this court order in the way that best serves Apple, obviously. But others are going to challenge that, obviously. Regardless of who wins, it just continues the bad vibes yielding bad blood within Apple’s own developer community. And it’s going to keep the pressure on them, politically.
Apple will now have to allow all apps to link out to the web for sign-ups and payments. And while the company had already started to allow for that, it was undoubtedly, in part, because they knew they were screwed in this case. This ruling just affirmed that.
Further, I’m still not entirely convinced that Tim Sweeney didn’t know what he was doing with regard to all of this. Sure, Epic “lost” the vast majority of the case, but this one change is something he very clearly cared about — as his email to Apple SVP Phil Schiller (which he, of course, knew would be made public) made very clear at the time. And it’s a massive deal because it’s the biggest change yet in the inevitable overhaul of the App Store.
