Judge orders Apple to allow external payment options for the App Store by December 9

The judge in Epic v. Apple, Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, says that Apple must comply with an order to allow developers to add links and buttons to external payment options, denying the company's motion for a suspension. "Apple's motion is based on a selective reading of this Court's findings and ignores all of the findings that supported the court order," she says of her new order.

Judge González Rogers issued her order after a hearing Tuesday on the successful antitrust lawsuit, which the publisher of Fortnite Epic Games filed in 2020 and which went to trial this year. During the hearing, Apple said it needed more time to rewrite its anti-address policies, rules that prohibit app developers from linking to payment methods other than the iOS App Store.

"This will be the first time Apple has ever allowed live links in an app for digital content. It's going to take months to figure out the engineering, economic, business, and other issues," said Apple attorney Mark Perry. "It is exceedingly complicated. There have to be guardrails and guidelines to protect children, to protect developers, to protect consumers, to protect Apple. And they have to be written into guidelines that can be explained and enforced and applied."

Apple has mainly praised the ruling in Epic v. Apple, where Judge González Rogers concluded that Apple had not violated antitrust law by kicking Fortnite from the App Store and said the company did not have to reformulate Epic's developer account. But it appealed to the section saying that Apple's anti-management policies hid relevant information from users and required it to remove them.

Perry noted that Apple has already made one of the two required changes. In August, as part of a class action settlement, it removed a rule that restricted how developers could contact users via email. But Apple has described the in-app links as a unique threat to users' trust and safety, saying they could allow developers to scam users or send them to malicious sites. "We believe that these changes, if Apple is forced to implement them, will upset the platform. They will harm consumers. They will harm developers. That is a fact. It is going to happen," Perry said.

Epic framed Apple's request as a delay tactic with no real commitment to change. "Apple does nothing unless it is forced to do it," said Epic attorney Gary Bornstein. Judge González Rogers was sceptical of Apple's request, particularly as he requested an indefinite stay of the injunction despite saying that Apple just wanted more time to assess the risks. "You haven't asked for additional time. You've asked for an injunction which would effectively take years," she said. "You asked for an across-the-board stay which could take 3, 4, 5 years." Perry responded that Apple wanted to delay the changes until the case was resolved, saying that he was confident that "we're going to win the appeal."

That did not sway the judge: In its order Tuesday night, it accused Apple of wanting "an open-ended stay with no requirement that it make any effort to comply," and suggested that "Apple has provided no credible reason for the Court to believe that the injunction would cause the professed devastation," regarding the company's argument that it would be harmed by adding external links to alternative payment systems within the applications.

Apple says it plans to appeal to the Ninth Circuit for a suspension, as it did not obtain one from Judge González Rogers."Apple believes no additional business changes should be required to take effect until all appeals in this case are resolved. We intend to ask the Ninth Circuit for a stay based on these circumstances," an Apple spokesperson writes.

Pending a suspension of some kind, the injunction will take effect on December 9. Disclaimer: The above story has been taken from The Verge, the story has been edited except for the statements.