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Yomiuri Shimbun
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Epic Games' Fortnite Returns to Apple App Store in US after Nearly 5 Years
Reuters file photo Fortnite game graphic is displayed on a smartphone in front of Apple logo in this illustration created on May 2, 2021. May 20 (Reuters) – Epic Games' wildly popular multiplayer shooter game 'Fortnite' is available again on Apple's AAPL.O App Store in the U.S. from Tuesday, capping a ban of nearly five years and marking a major win for the video game company. Epic Games, a U.S.-based studio backed by China's Tencent has been locked in a legal battle with Apple since 2020. Epic Games alleged the iPhone maker's practice of charging a commission of up to 30% on in-app payments violated U.S. antitrust rules. Fortnite's return to Apple's iOS systems in the U.S. follows an April 30 ruling by a federal judge saying that Apple violated a U.S. court order that required the company to allow greater competition for app downloads and payment methods in its App Store. The ruling also said that Apple had failed to comply with the judge's prior injunction order and would be referred to federal prosecutors for a criminal contempt investigation. Apple did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on Fortnite's return to its App Store. 'We back fam,' Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney posted on social media platform X. Launched in 2017, Fortnite became an instant hit, drawing millions of players around the world thanks to its last-player-standing, 'battle royale' format. At the time of the ban, Epic had 116 million users just on Apple's platform. 'For Epic Games this was a hard fought win that carried a very steep price and may be too late to boost its Fortnite game that is now past its prime,' said Gil Luria, analyst at D.A. Davidson. 'For Apple this is another crack in the armor that the services business relies on — the funneling of payments through Apple in order to charge developers for every transaction.' Michael Ashley Schulman, chief investment officer at Running Point Capital Advisors, said this opened the door for subscription apps like Spotify SPOT.N and Netflix NFLX.O to claw back margin and for independent studios to monetize without having to pay Apple an extra commission, potentially reshaping iOS economics over the next 12-18 months. Apple and Alphabet's Google banned Fortnite from their stores in 2020 over a tussle about in-app payment guidelines. The game had already returned to Google's Android devices worldwide and iPhones in the EU last year. The game title was also available on the Epic Games Store and AltStore in the European Union, Fortnite said on X on Tuesday.
USA Today
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
Epic Games' Fortnite not available on iPhones in EU and the US
Epic Games' Fortnite not available on iPhones in EU and the US Show Caption Hide Caption Owned an Apple device in the last decade? Get your part of a $95M payout If you've owned an Apple device in the past decade you may be owed part of a $95 million settlement. Here's how to stake your claim. Straight Arrow News Epic Games' "Fortnite" video game was not available on Apple's AAPL.O iPhone devices in the European Union and the United States on Friday. Access to Fortnite via Apple's iPhone Operating System and through its App Store will be unavailable worldwide until Apple unblocks it, Epic Games said. Epic Games did not give a reason why Fortnite was blocked, but Apple said it had asked Epic Sweden to resubmit the app update without including the U.S. storefront so as not to impact Fortnite in other geographies. "We did not take any action to remove the live version of Fortnite from alternative distribution marketplaces," an Apple spokesperson said. In case you missed it: Apple challenges US judge's order in Epic Games lawsuit on App Store Epic, a U.S.-based studio, backed by China's Tencent is the world's largest game studio. It was launched in 2017 and its last-player-standing, "battle royale" format became an instant hit, drawing millions of players. Since 2020, however, it has been in a legal battle with Apple, after the gaming firm alleged that Apple's practice of charging a commission of up to 30% on in-app payments violated U.S. antitrust rules. Apple banned Fortnite from its store in 2020 but allowed the game back last year following pressure from European Union authorities for Big Tech companies to comply with the bloc's Digital Markets Act. Last year, it also approved Epic Games' marketplace app on iPhones and iPads in Europe. Epic Games also won a case against Apple earlier this month. Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee in Stockholm, additional reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; editing by Barbara Lewis and Alan Barona
Reuters
12-04-2025
- Business
- Reuters
Exclusive: Alphabet, Nvidia invest in OpenAI co-founder Sutskever's SSI, source says
SAN FRANCISCO, April 11 (Reuters) - Alphabet (GOOGL.O), opens new tab and Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab have joined prominent venture capital investors to back Safe Superintelligence (SSI), a startup co-founded by OpenAI's former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever that has quickly risen to become one of the most valuable artificial intelligence startups months after its launch, a source familiar with the matter said. The funding illustrates renewed interest from the big tech and infrastructure providers in making strategic investments in the startups developing cutting-edge AI that requires massive amounts of computing power. Alphabet, which has its own AI models, earlier in the week announced a deal by its cloud computing arm to sell SSI access to tensor processing units (TPUs), its in-house AI chips. SSI, which sources say was recently valued at $32 billion in a round led by Greenoaks, is one of the highest-profile startups working on AI model research, thanks to Sutskever's stellar track record in predicting the next big thing in AI development. Like many of its competitors, it has a huge demand for chips. Reuters could not determine the exact terms of Alphabet's and Nvidia's investment in SSI. Spokespeople for all three companies declined to comment. The twin moves by Alphabet's corporate and cloud division with high-profile AI labs including SSI and Anthropic show the tech giant's evolving AI hardware strategy. Google originally reserved TPUs for in-house use. The deal to sell SSI chips in significant quantities to support its frontier AI research exemplifies the company's ongoing strategy to expand sales to external customers, Darren Mowry, a managing director in charge of Google's partnerships with startups, said in an interview with Reuters this week. "With these foundational model builders, the gravity is increasing dramatically over to us," he said. AI developers have historically preferred Nvidia's graphics processing units, which hold more than 80% of the AI chips market. But SSI is so far primarily using TPUs rather than GPUs for its AI research and development, two sources said. Google offers both Nvidia GPUs and its own TPUs through its cloud service. Its own chips are intended to excel at specific AI tasks and are more efficient than general-purpose GPUs. These chips have been used to build large-scale AI models, such as Apple (AAPL.O), opens new tab and Anthropic, an OpenAI competitor that has received billions of dollars of funding from Google and Amazon (AMZN.O), opens new tab. Google and Nvidia also face a challenger in Amazon, which is building its own competing processors called Trainium and Inferentia. Amazon has said as far back as 2023 that Anthropic would develop its technology on those chips. The tech giant announced in December that Anthropic would be the first customer to use a massive supercomputer powered by hundreds of thousands of its own chips. In the meantime, Anthropic continues to use TPUs for its AI development and has not decreased spending on Google's chips, two sources said. It is increasingly common for major cloud providers to invest heavily in AI startups that not only build foundational models but also serve as significant customers of their infrastructure. For instance, Amazon and Google have both invested in Anthropic, while Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab has placed substantial bets on OpenAI. Nvidia has also backed OpenAI, as well as Elon Musk's xAI.
Reuters
25-03-2025
- Business
- Reuters
Exclusive: EU set to close investigation into Apple's browser options, sources say
BRUSSELS, March 25 (Reuters) - EU antitrust regulators are set to close their year-long investigation into Apple's (AAPL.O), opens new tab browser options on iPhones after the company made changes to comply with the requirements set out in landmark rules, people with direct knowledge of the matter said on Tuesday. The European Commission launched an investigation in March last year under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), concerned that Apple's design of the web browser screen on its iPhones may hinder users from switching to a rival browser or search engine. The EU competition enforcer is expected to announce its decision early next week, the people said.
Reuters
31-01-2025
- Business
- Reuters
Ireland must accelerate electricity investment after storm damage, PM says
DUBLIN, Jan 31 (Reuters) - Ireland must speed up substantial investment in its electricity grid to prepare for future weather events after 74,000 homes, farms and businesses remained without power a week after Storm Eowyn battered the country, Prime Minister Micheál Martin said. ESB Networks, the country's energy provider, has restored power to 694,000 homes and businesses with the help of crews from Europe but says some customers, many in remote locations, will remain in the dark until Feb. 6. The recently re-elected government has already pledged a major capital investment programme to fix creaking infrastructure, partly through the use of a 14 billion euro ($14.52 billion) Apple AAPL.O tax windfall. "I have already asked for work to be done to accelerate investment in the (electricity) grid, to future proof it and make it more resilient," Martin told reporters on Friday. "There will be a need for really substantial investment in our electricity grid into the future because if you look over the last 10 years, the number and severity of storms of this kind is growing," Martin said. "Climate change is now having an impact to a significant degree in our country." ($1 = 0.9643 euros)
