Back in March, the European Union introduced new rules to prevent companies like Apple and Google from blocking third-party companies that operate their own in-app item stores. This should pave the way for games like Fourteen days To return to mobile, they can now make in-game purchases without having to use Apple or Google’s own stores, earning 30 percent of each purchase back. However, the EU may feel that Apple is still not playing fair and could start enormously Fines.
The theory was that the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) would allow apps and games to run their own independent payment systems for in-app purchases. Everything previously launched on iOS required all payments to go through Apple’s own systems, and there the company would take 30 percent each time. Companies like Epic argued very loudly that such a system is deeply unfair and that while it is hard to choose between the greedy corporations that take money from the apps and the apps that take money from their customers, Epic was right that it is anti-competitive. The EU agreed, announcing the DMA in 2023 and enacting it this year.
Read more: Thanks to new EU rules Fourteen days Coming back to iPhone [Update]
However, cheeky Apple immediately constructed its own loopholes by technically allowing apps to run their own stores, but only if they paid for it. a so-called Core Technology Fee of $0.50 per installation of their app. The fee only applied to companies with over a million installations in the last 12 months, but it was obviously designed to ensure that the company still received its tithe. At first glance, this clearly does not correspond to the spirit of the new rules.
(It’s also worth noting that apps that are surprisingly successful could be hit particularly hard if they suddenly find themselves being charged a euro for every other install of their viral product, plus an additional three percent in fees for using iOS’s payment processing software, and find themselves in big trouble very quickly.)
Tim Sweeney was predictably unimpressed. In January 2024, he described it as “another insidious case of malicious compliance.”
It seems that the EU is somewhat in agreement. According to a report in Financial TimesAccording to the newspaper’s sources, the European Commission considers that Apple is not complying with the new law and will therefore soon begin imposing fines – the first imposed on the basis of the DMA.
And these fines aren’t cheap. If Apple is officially found to be violating the DMA, the maximum penalty is five percent of average daily revenue. In Apple’s case, that’s a staggering $1 billion.
Don’t try to comprehend that Apple turns over $20 billion a day – the human brain is not designed to cope with that level of monstrous capitalism – but just know that it is enough to damage the company and anger shareholders. Meanwhile, the same EU group is investigating whether Meta (Facebook) and Alphabet (Google) may also be breaking the rules. The FT also points out that Apple may still have time to change its new system to avoid the fines.
Apple told the FT The company is “confident that our plan is compliant with the DMA” and will “continue to work constructively with the European Commission in conducting its investigations.”
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