The ruling is part of a lawsuit filed by Epic Games against Apple in August 2020 after it was removed from the App Store for offering an alternative payment option to users to make in-app purchases.
Apple usually takes a 30 percent commission for in-app purchases made by users. Epic Games accused the company of stifling competition while forcing consumers to use the App Store and Apple’s payment system to make purchases.
In 2021, Gonzalez Rogers found Apple to have violated California’s unfair competition law by prohibiting app developers from “steering” users to make purchases outside the in-app system. The court ordered Apple to give users other purchasing options.
In the April 30 ruling, Gonzalez Rogers said Apple was in “willful violation” of the 2021 order.
Instead of following the order, Apple went ahead and imposed “new barriers and new requirements,” the judge said.
Apple also began charging a 27 percent commission on off-app purchases, where it had earlier charged nothing, it said.
On Thursday, the company said that App Review Guidelines “have been updated for compliance with a United States court decision regarding buttons, external links, and other calls to action in apps. These changes affect apps distributed on the United States storefront of the App Store.”
NFTs are blockchain-based tokens representing a unique asset, such as digital content, and act as a digital certificate of ownership.
Another change was made to Rule 3.1.1(a), which was updated to state that developers need not make an application to the company to include “buttons, external links, or other calls to action in their United States storefront apps.”
Updates were also made to policies related to other purchase methods and Reader apps.
In the April 30 ruling, Gonzalez Rogers criticized Apple for not following the 2021 court order, saying the company’s goal was to “dissuade customer usage of alternative purchase opportunities and maintain its anticompetitive revenue stream.”
“In the end, Apple sought to maintain a revenue stream worth billions in direct defiance of this Court’s Injunction,” the judge said.
“The Court will not tolerate further delays. As previously ordered, Apple will not impede competition. Effective immediately, Apple will no longer impede developers’ ability to communicate with users, nor will they levy or impose a new commission on off-app purchases.”
Apple has denied any wrongdoing, previously arguing in a court filing that the company had made “extensive” efforts to comply with the court injunction while “preserving the fundamental features of Apple’s business model and safeguarding consumers.”
Apple’s Regulatory Challenges
Apple is also dealing with multiple regulatory rulings in Europe, which come with hefty fines.Apple was found to have breached anti-steering obligations under the European Union’s Digital Markets Act. The provision requires that developers distributing apps via Apple’s App Store are able to “inform customers, free of charge, of alternative offers outside the App Store, steer them to those offers and allow them to make purchases.”
The commission said that the company “fails to comply with this obligation,” adding that Apple has imposed several restrictions against steering.
As a consequence, the executive body said users cannot benefit from alternative, cheaper offers since Apple prevents developers from informing customers about them.
The feature made it obligatory for apps to seek permission from users before collecting data for personalized ads.
Critics argued that the feature makes it difficult for smaller apps to survive without charging users. The regulator said users ended up facing a bombardment of pop-ups.
