Epic Games is one of the first gaming companies to announce its ambitions to create a metaverse. The other day, its head, Tim Sweeney, noted that these plans were partly the reason for his confrontation with Apple and Google.

A few days ago, a number of mobile publishers accused Apple of secretly buying Google ads for selected applications. The company allegedly does this to increase its revenue from subscriptions. Apple claims that all such campaigns were coordinated with the developers and do not violate the rules of the App Store.What happened?

Apple was unable to appeal the verdict of the court in the case with Epic Games and postpone the relaxation of the App Store rules. The court rejected the company’s appeal and recalled that links to other payment methods should still be available in applications from December 9.

Apple traditionally does not consider applications in the App Store Connect during the holidays. However, this year the company decided to make an exception — it will be possible to submit an update request for its application even at Christmas. Developers are still advised to hurry up.Apple told about this on November 8, publishing a small blog post for developers.

The Federal Antimonopoly Service of the Russian Federation has opened a case against Apple. The company is accused of abusing its dominant position in the market. Now Apple faces a fine for prohibiting developers from informing users about alternative payment methods outside the App Store.The FAS announced this on its website on October 27.

Apple has made changes to the App Store guidelines. One of the points concerns the lifting of the ban on informing users about alternative payment methods outside of iOS. This is a direct response to a class action lawsuit from developers that the company settled in August.In total, Apple changed three points of its rules on October 22.

Snap’s quarterly revenue exceeded $1 billion for the first time in history. However, this amount was still below forecasts. The company itself attributes this to changes in Apple’s policy and the loss of advertising revenue after the release of iOS 14.5.Snap told about this in the remarks to the financial report for the third quarter of 2021 (ended September 30).

The editors of the App Store, if desired, may refuse to publish the application if they consider the category “oversaturated” and the product devoid of uniqueness.

South Korean authorities are unhappy with Apple. Last month, they ordered her and Google to relax payment rules in app stores. Google agreed to make concessions, but Apple did not change anything. Now Korean officials are preparing to investigate Tim Cook‘s company.

Blender uses a special fund to develop and support its tools. Now Apple is among the main sponsors. The company’s funds will be used to develop the key components of Blender and add new functions to it.The fact that Apple will transfer funds to the Blender Development Fund on a monthly basis was announced by the developers of the toolkit on October 14.

Apple has released a big report on the dangers of third-party stores and how they will affect the ecosystem of mobile devices. The company hopes to influence the decision on the monopoly case and the payment rules of the App Store.

A month ago, Apple doubted whether it should appeal the verdict of the court in the case with Epic Games. But last Friday, the company decided and filed an appeal. According to experts, the proceedings can drag on for years.

The Antimonopoly Authority of the Netherlands was the first in the world to recognize Apple as a monopolist due to the payment rules of the App Store. The regulator demanded that the company change its store policy. Apple has already prepared an appeal.

Apple has added new tracking metrics to App Analytics, an analytics service for developers. Among other things, it has the ability to find out the number of all downloads of the application, including repeated ones.

This year Apple has made a soft relaunch of Apple Arcade. In an attempt to attract a new audience, the company has added many already successful casual iOS titles to the library. Gaming expert Simon Carless has figured out the reasons for the change of strategy and Apple’s unwillingness to finance risky exclusives.In the latest issue of his newsletter, Carless published a table of the 22 most popular titles in Apple Arcade at the moment.

Two weeks ago, South Korea banned Apple and Google from imposing their payment systems on mobile developers. But it seems that companies still do not follow this requirement. The Korean authorities are ready to wait until mid—October – they have given so much time to prepare a plan to comply with the new law.

Tim Sweeney said that Apple has blacklisted the Fortnite game in its ecosystem. Battle Royale will stay there until the court hears all appeals in the Epic Games case. It may take about five years.

In the first half of the year, the App Store has lost a lot of weight. The Pixalate platform found that about 221 thousand applications were missing from the store*. Almost two-thirds of them violated Apple‘s privacy rules.

While Epic Games is preparing to appeal the court’s decision on the lawsuit against Apple, Apple itself has not decided what to do. The company said it was still considering whether or not to appeal.