"Of all the strange, unintended consequences stemming from major lawsuits, I never thought that the Trump administration's power to force Apple to remove ICE-tracking mobile apps from its stores could have been connected to a legal battle over Fortnite V-Bucks."
"Yes, we are talking about the in-game digital currency that Fortnite players can use to buy taco hats and trending zoomer dance emotes for their avatars. Yes, they're the ones you can purchase as gift cards at CVS for a 9-year-old's emergency birthday gift. But at one point, they were the subject of two major lawsuits filed by developer Epic Games, a massive gaming company that has pulled in over $5 billion in yearly revenue since 2020,"
Epic Games sued Apple and Google to challenge strict App Store and Play Store rules and the platforms' control over app distribution and payments. The litigation centered on in-game currency like Fortnite V-Bucks and sought to open alternative payment and distribution paths. Apple won portions of the dispute, but the legal outcomes produced unintended effects that empowered governmental requests to remove apps. The Trump administration used those changes to order the removal of ICE-tracking apps including ICEBlock. The interplay of litigation, platform policies, and government enforcement produced consequences beyond the original commercial dispute.
Read at The Verge
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