Appeals court denies Apple’s emergency motion to halt new App Store rules as legal battle continues
A major change to the App Store within the past couple of months as a result of a ruling by United States district court judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers means that third-party developers like Epic Games and Spotify are finally able to direct consumers to web-based purchases rather than using the App Store’s in-app purchase method and paying Apple a 15-30% commission fee in the process.
Because of this ruling, Epic Games was able to successfully reinstate the popular Fortnite mobile video game into the App Store without Apple’s intrusive ‘Apple tax’ on developer income, which was one of the primary reasons why Epic Games had originally pulled the game from the App Store in the first place.
Apple, clearly frustrated with this circumvention around their anti-competitive behavior, went to an appeals court and filed an emergency motion to pause the novel App Store rule changes while the legal battle between the Cupertino-based company and Epic Games continues.
Apple clearly wanted to continue collecting a massive chunk of revenue from App Store developers through in-app purchases until a final decision is rendered, but according to a report first shared by Reuters, that attempt seems to have fallen through the cracks, as the court has officially rejected Apple’s plea. This means that App Store developers can continue to evade the ‘Apple tax’ until a court makes a final decision on the matter.
From what we can gather, Apple tried to articulate the fact that this decision was causing irreparable harm to the company by allowing free access to its platform. Apple believes it has every right to charge its ‘Apple tax’ on developers, and while that may be the case, the problem is that Apple never allowed App Store developers any other means to collect income outside of first party in-app purchases.
Following the ruling, App Store developers can now route users away from in-app purchases and instead to external websites where they can enter their payment information. This means users can get the same great benefits without app developers raising the cost to compensate for what’s lost in the ‘Apple tax’ transaction. For example, this is precisely why subscribing to YouTube Premium costs more in-app than it does in a web browser.
While Apple’s emergency motion has been shunned away, the legal battle continues – this means Apple will not receive any near-term emergency relief from Judge Rogers’ ruling, but it’s still up in the air as to what the final appeal decision might be. Only time will tell…
Source link: https://www.idownloadblog.com/2025/06/04/appeals-court-denies-apples-emergency-motion-to-halt-new-app-store-rules-as-legal-battle-continues/
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