The company, Epic Games, which owns the game Fortnite, said in a new statement to the court that Apple threatens the entire ecosystem of game developers in response to the Fortnite lawsuit that it previously submitted after the dispute between the two companies.
The statement focuses on the support of the Apple operating system "iOS" for the game engine Unreal (Unreal), which Apple has threatened to ban the famous game company if it does not comply with the instructions of the Apple Store.
The company, the developer of Fortnite, asked the court to prevent Apple from taking this action until the case is decided. Epic Games says that "removing the support would be an unnecessary punishment and would affect developers who designed their games based on the engine, who have nothing to do with this case."
"The widening of Apple's retaliation is in itself an illegal effort to protect its monopoly and stifle any action that others are considering taking to oppose Apple," Epic Games said.
The Unreal Engine (Unreal) is an IPC innovation, and is a set of software tools (often referred to as the "engine") that developers use to build video games.
Any developer who uses the engine will not be able to correct the security flaws once access to it is revoked by Apple, which stops support for a wide range of games, including Microsoft's Forza Street.
Microsoft is interfering in favor of Fortnite
Microsoft announced its support for Epic Games, stressing the disastrous revocation of its access to Apple's developer tools.
Kevin Gamel, general manager of game developer experiences for Xbox, said, "Epic Games' access to Apple's SDK package of development tools and other development tools is denied by Epic Games from supporting the Unreal game engine on iOS. "IOS and macOS, and the ban harms the game engine and its makers who have relied on it to build games."
"If the Unreal engine cannot support games for the iOS or Mac OS operating system, Microsoft will be required to choose between abandoning its existing and potential customers on the iOS and Mac OS platforms, or choosing a different game engine when preparing to develop new games."
Gammell said Microsoft has an enterprise-level license to use the Unreal engine, and Apple's move hinders its ability to create games using technology for the Mac and iPhone devices.
Microsoft has filed a statement with the US Criminal Court in Oakland, California alleging that Apple's move to ban EPIC threatens a large community of creators unconnected with the ongoing lawsuit.
Gammell warns that, "As iOS is a large and growing market for games, Apple's cessation of support for Anril's ability to support iOS will affect Microsoft and other game developers' future decisions to use it and force them to choose a new game engine."
The conflict between Apple and Fortnite began on August 13th, when Apple and Google removed the popular Fortnite game from their official app stores.
The removal came after Epic introduced a new way for players to purchase in-game Fortnite currency known as V-Bucks at a reduced rate. This new purchase option allowed players to bypass in-app purchases, which in turn deprived Apple and Google of the estimated 30% they were getting from their app store sales.
Both Apple and Google say the removal of Fortnite from their app stores occurred because Epic violated store policies.