Xbox has come out in support of Epic in its request for a temporary restraining order against Apple.
On Sunday Head ofXboxPhil Spencermade his Twitter followers aware of a statementMicrosofthad filed with the Northern District of California court, supporting Epic’s motion for a temporary restraining order against theiOSfirm.
This monthEpic challenged Apple’s 30 percent cut of in-app purchasesby adding a direct payment option to theFortniteApp, in breach of App Store rules. The move resulted inthe removal of Fortnite from iOSand Epic immediately filed a lawsuit.
Epic subsequentlyrequested a temporary restraining order, which would reverse Fortnite’s App Store removal and the impending cancellation of its developer accounts, which it needs to support its popular Unreal Engine tech on iOS.
In Microsoft’s statement of support, its GM of Gaming Developer Experience Kevin Gammill highlighted the affect blocking Epic’s ability to support Unreal on iOS would have on developers.
He called on the court to grant Epic’s temporary restraining order, on the basis that blocking Unreal Engine would “harm game creators and gamers.”
Today we filed a statement in support of Epic’s request to keep access to the Apple SDK for its Unreal Engine. Ensuring that Epic has access to the latest Apple technology is the right thing for gamer developers & gamershttps://t.co/72bLdDkvUx
“Epic Games’ Unreal Engine is critical technology for numerous game creators including Microsoft,” he said.
“Denying Epic access toApple’s SDK and other development tools will prevent Epic from supporting Unreal Engine on iOS and macOS, and will place Unreal Engine and those game creators that have built, are building, and may build games on it at a substantial disadvantage.”
He added: “If Unreal Engine cannot support games for iOS or macOS, Microsoft would be required to choose between abandoning its customers and potential customers on the iOS and macOS platforms or choosing a different game engine when preparing to develop new games.”
Gammill said Apple’s removal of Unreal Engine’s ability to develop updates could also harm already-launched iOS and macOS games built with the middleware.
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“If the game engine can no longer develop updates that take advantage of new iOS or macOS features, fix software bugs, or patch security flaws, this will harm games that have already launched on iOS and macOS (and, in turn, harm gamers),” he said.
Microsoft has a company-wide, multi-year Unreal Engine license agreement and has released games with the technology onPC, console and mobile.
The Xbox firm had its own dispute with Apple this month, when the iOS firm blocked the release of Xbox game streaming on the platform.
This led to astrongly-worded statementin which Microsoft claimed that “Apple stands alone as the only general-purpose platform to deny consumers from cloud gaming and game subscription services like Xbox Game Pass.”
