How App Store Ruling Will Open Onchain Floodgates

What happens when the world’s biggest tech monopoly gets dragged into a courtroom by one of gaming’s most powerful studios – and loses? The answer might very well change mobile development forever…

After nearly five years of legal warfare, Epic Games has forced Apple to rewrite the App Store rulebook. Besides presenting a massive opportunity for crypto, this moment represents a turning point for developers long constrained by Apple’s walled garden: the freedom to monetize on their own terms.

Today, we’re unpacking Epic’s multi-year legal battle and examining its profound implications for mobile app developers. 👇

🍎 Apple’s Antitrust Reckoning

In August 2020, Epic Games sued Apple, accusing the tech giant of anticompetitive behavior after it banned Fortnite – Epic’s immensely popular multiplayer battle royale game – from the App Store.

At the heart of the dispute was Apple’s policy of mandating all in-app purchases flow through the App Store and subjecting payments to an egregious 30% fee share; Epic Games had attempted to circumvent the predatory policy by implementing its own in-game payment rails.

Although Apple eventually provided a minor concession by allowing developers to link to alternative payment options, the updated policy still required a 27% revenue share with Apple and heavily restricted how payments could be displayed in apps.

Neither side was willing to concede, but after nearly five years of protracted litigation, the U.S. District Court of Northern California has firmly settled the matter.

In a scathing eighty-page rebuke, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled that Apple willfully violated the law by maintaining anticompetitive barriers intended to safeguard the value of its multi-billion dollar App Store revenue stream.

Furthermore, she referred Apple and one of its finance VPs to federal prosecutors for criminal contempt charges, citing their violation of a previous 2021 injunction that prohibited anticompetitive App Store pricing behaviors.

Whereas the 2021 injunction against Apple primarily challenged its arbitrary 30% rake, this most recent decision expressly prohibits Apple from imposing commissions on off-app purchases and controlling how developers communicate with their users.

🥇 Crypto Golden Age?

To come into compliance with Judge Gonzalez Rogers’ ruling, Apple was forced to update its App Store review guidelines for the United States.

Not only do the revised guidelines eliminate any prohibitions on external links, they also explicitly permit developers to surface NFT collections to their users. This marks a significant victory for crypto’s fledgling gaming sector, embattled onchain artists, and others who leverage blockchain-based collectibles to monetize their business.

Most importantly, however, the updated guidelines exempt U.S. applications from Apple’s ban on external payment methods beyond the App Store that can bypass its 30% revenue share.

Crypto payments are acclaimed for their virtually instant speeds and extremely low costs, and while mobile application developers had been previously restricted to using approved high-fee payment channels, Apple’s recent legal defeat clears the way for developers to use whatever methods they please!

In a world where mobile applications can choose how users pay, many cost-motivated developers will rationally abandon Apple’s walled garden and exorbitant fees in favor of alternative solutions.

Defaulting to App Store payments provides undeniable convenience for application end users: they already have their payment details on file with Apple and may be hesitant to store sensitive financial information with random third-party platforms.

While large studios like Epic Games may find it worthwhile to strike out on their own and develop proprietary payments portals, for smaller shops, this new limitless environment presents a fertile ground for stablecoin experimentation.

Rather than repeatedly loading credit card information into yet another random website and praying they’re competent enough to safeguard it, application users can instead make instantaneous payments with any token in their crypto wallets, streamlining the payment process and guaranteeing a trustless experience for all involved.

Developers, in turn, gain instant access to 100% of their funds – likely stored in stablecoins – and can focus solely on game development while outsourcing payment responsibility to an onchain economy purpose-built for such use.

It’s truly a compelling proposition for all parties, one that facilitates user-app interactions, bolsters the economics of mobile app creation, and encourages mainstream adoption of crypto payments.

The dust is still settling on Apple’s policy shift, but the door to mobile monetization has clearly swung wide open. In this new era, developers are empowered to build, earn, and scale on their own terms.

With seamless crypto payments now in the mix, the future of onchain apps has never looked brighter. 💫