Spotify weighs in on the fight between Apple and Epic Games

Today has been quite the day, but now we’ve got Spotify weighing in on the dispute between Apple and Epic Games. You won’t be surprised which side of the argument Spotify is on.

As noted today by Peter Kafka of Recode, Spotify is on the side of Epic Games when it comes to all of this, saying it “applauds” the company for “taking a stand against Apple”. Spotify also says Epic Games is shedding “further light” on “Apple’s abuse of its dominant position”. The full statement is just below:

We applaud Epic Games’ decision to take a stand against Apple and shed further light on Apple’s abuse of its dominant position. Apple’s unfair practices have disadvantaged competitors and deprived consumers for far too long. The stakes for consumers and app developers large and small couldn’t be higher and ensuring that the iOS platform operates competitively and fairly is an urgent task with far-reaching implications.

Things escalated quite a bit. Earlier today, Epic Games launched a server-side update for the popular battle royale game Fortnite for iOS which added a direct payment option for buying in-game currency, what Epic calls V-Bucks. That direct purchase option violates App Store rules, which Epic Games was obviously aware of, but released anyway. As a result, Apple removed Fortnite from the App Store, citing the violations of the published rules.

Since then, Epic has essentially made it clear that it’s not backing down in this dispute. The company filed pre-prepared legal papers against Apple, suing the company for what it describes as anticompetitive behavior. Epic Games also released a quick video that’s a parody of Apple’s original 1984 advertisement, which you can watch just below.

This is all still developing of course, and it will be interesting to see what public statements are made by not only Apple and Epic Games, but also other companies with executives that might want to weigh in just like Spotify.

Let us know what you think of all this in the comments below.