Imagine a local merchant barging into a wildly popular marketplace, demanding the prime stall rent-free, and when refused, returning with armed muscle in the name of marketplace “freedom.” Today, Apple’s App Store is that marketplace; Epic Games the interloper; government the hired muscle.
Epic’s campaign of exploitation began in August 2020, when it smuggled an unauthorized payment system into Fortnite to dodge Apple’s 30% App Store commission. Apple removed the game; Epic sued, accusing Apple of “monopolizing” iOS payments. A judge rightly tossed the federal antitrust claim and granted Apple damages for Epic’s breach of contract, yet still ruled against Apple under the state-level antitrust statute California’s Unfair Competition Law (UCL) for blocking outside-payment links and thus preventing “informed choice.” In April 2025 the same court held Apple in civil contempt for trying to “maintain its anti-competitive revenue stream” by steering customers away from external links, which Apple now has to allow, or introducing a new fee on outside purchases. Since, Apple has been forced to allow external payments with no new fees or warnings scaring customers away from external links.
This law and ruling represent a total inversion of justice. Apple built its App Store platform, and therefore owns it.
Think of what lies behind a single tap on an iPhone icon. In that split second, Apple’s custom silicon authenticates you, encrypted enclaves unlock credentials, and a globe-spanning delivery network pushes code while reconciling taxes in 200 jurisdictions and filtering fraud — every millisecond funded and engineered by Apple. All of this means a college student can polish an idea for a new app at midnight and ship it to a billion pockets before sunrise.
None of this existed before the App Store launched in 2008. Apple wagered its future on the conviction that people wanted a seamless, safe, mobile world, and their vision birthed a golden age of app development: ride hailing, same‑day groceries, indie film studios, and Epic’s own Fortnite — all built to capitalize on the multibillion-user market Apple created.
Instead of gratitude, Apple received a court order.
Epic now demands free access to App Store infrastructure. CEO Tim Sweeney frames the lawsuit as a crusade for “the freedom of creators to distribute as they choose.” Yet Fortnite’s distribution thrives on PC, Xbox, PlayStation, Switch, and Android’s billion-plus-device market. The lone freedom Epic lacked was the “freedom” to exploit Apple’s platform while dodging the toll.
Apple’s 30% commission is not a “tax.” It is the price of admission — voluntarily paid by every developer who wishes to access the value Apple created. To brand that arrangement “exploitation” is a moral travesty, demanding Apple surrender its justly earned rewards. And by choosing to offer Fortnite on the App Store in the first place, Epic implicitly acknowledged its value to them.
Apple pioneered the key mechanics that inform App Store customers — ratings, reviews, and privacy labels. Saying that steering consumers away from external payment links impedes “informed choice” evades all the choices and information Apple made available.
Ordering Apple to plaster its storefront with rival payment links is like forcing a bookstore to tape competitors’ coupons across its windows. Such a mandate is an enormous injustice that strips Apple of the right to profit from the value it created. Indeed, it is the court which is acting contemptibly by legalizing exploitation of Apple, not Apple which is trying to protect its legitimate business with new fees or “scare screens.”
While major blame lies with Epic, it was only able to exploit Apple by relying on the existence of “unfair competition” laws. Epic couches its campaign in the language of “liberty,” but it uses the force of the law against the very thing that liberty protects: freedom of contract. A system that seeks to deprive producers of control over their businesses is institutionalizing plunder.
Justice demands that those who create have the right to decide the terms of trade and to claim the rewards that result. To achieve that justice, we need to eliminate the tools of legalized looting. This means repealing legislation like California’s Unfair Competition Law and federal antitrust laws.
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