Germany’s antitrust watchdog is following the Apple vs. Epic Games legal brouhaha and says it could, in principle, open a national inquiry, reports Reuters.
“This has most certainly attracted our interest,” said Andreas Mundt, head of the Federal Cartel Office. “We are at the beginning, but we are looking at this very closely.”
In online briefing, he added that Apple’s App Store and the Play Store that serves smartphones running on Google’s Android operating system represented an “interesting habitat because they are the only two worldwide”.
Although the Bonn-based authority does have the power to impose fines, it typically undertakes administrative probes into big technology firms to establish whether they’re abusing their market dominance and then seeks a change in the way they work, notes Reuters.
On Aug. 13, Epic Games announced that it had introduced a new direct payment option in the Fortnite app for iPhone and iPad, allowing players to purchase 1000 V-Bucks for US$7.99 rather than $9.99 through Apple’s in-app purchase mechanism. Shortly thereafter, Apple removed the gamer from the App Store for violating store polices and followed up by shutting down the company’s developer account. Epic immediately filed a lawsuit against Apple in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
