Company
Epic Games is the video game and software company behind Fortnite and the Unreal Engine, and a lead plaintiff in antitrust suits against Apple and Google.
Settlement talks between Apple and the DOJ reportedly center on iPhone interoperability, according to The Information. PayPal and Epic Games are among developers worried the terms will be too light, and no deal exists yet.
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Epic Games says its AI-written Store launcher preview halves startup time and reaches the store page 46% faster than Steam from a cold start. The figures are Epic's own, and the rebuild changed the architecture and tech stack along with the tooling, so they cannot isolate what AI contributed.
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Epic put a Linux Epic Games Launcher preview out on Oct. 14 and is rebuilding Easy Anti-Cheat for Fortnite, with no date. The new version requires Secure Boot, TPM 2.0 and signed kernels, VideoCardz reported, so only some Linux machines will qualify.
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Epic Games has released a preview of a rebuilt launcher that it says it vibe coded and calls light on features. The 46% startup lead over Steam comes from a test Epic commissioned, and the backlash so far is posts on X.
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Epic Games told developers on its delayed Disney shooter to build with AI first, Bloomberg reported, a game tied to Disney's $1.5 billion stake in Epic. Epic has not set a new release date.
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Epic Games is reassigning developers to retool around AI, with Tim Sweeney saying on X the aim is more output from the same staff. At the 3x efficiency he forecasts within a year, today's output would need a third of the staff, so Epic's headcount then is the test.
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Epic Games says Apple has scarcely produced documents nearly two months past the deadline behind its proposed 5% to 15% link commission. Apple disputes it, and the fee stays undecided while two courts each hold part of the case.
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Google is on trial in London over claims its 30% Play Store fee overcharged 20 million UK consumers by up to £1.2 billion. Over nearly 11 years of purchases that comes to about £60 a head, for a fee Google agreed in March to cut under its settlement with Epic Games.
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Capcom plans to rebuild RE Engine through a project called REX so AI can cut development time, programmer Satoshi Ishida told a company conference. For studios writing their own AI rules, the useful part is Capcom's split between AI in the tools and AI in the shipped game.
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The proposal landed the same day Apple asked a judge to order settlement talks Epic had already refused, and the same day the Supreme Court refused to pause the case. Any app with a web checkout now has a number.
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A San Francisco compliance hearing showed Google carrying rival app stores it had made effectively unsearchable. The judge answered with a testable threshold and a one-week deadline.
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The Core Technology Fee's 50 cents per install becomes a 5 percent Core Technology Commission on October 1, and link-out commission drops to 15 percent.
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Musical.ly paid $5.7mn in 2019 over the same statute. The DOJ's complaint treats registration-flow design as the violation, which makes age-gating a documented enforcement target.
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Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports that Ternus and Cue want more from a store he estimates at $30bn a year, at a moment when Appfigures has US commission revenue falling and the Supreme Court has yet to rule.
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The iPhone 18 Pro's Reference Image mode binds a photo to the sensor that captured it, then has Apple's cloud develop and sign the finished file. Apple's published account protects the original capture and stops at the edit.
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Apple's zero commission on external purchase links exists because a district court held the company in civil contempt, and the case that could remove that finding is now at the Supreme Court with the federal government on Apple's side.
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The judicial review turns on qualifying worldwide revenue, the figure behind Ofcom's annual fee and a fine cap of 10 percent of global turnover. The substantive hearing is set for October 2026, after the first invoices are expected.
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The justices agreed to review the contempt finding that followed Apple's compliance plan, the plan that allowed outside payment links and charged up to 27% on purchases made through them.
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The claim treats App Tracking Transparency as an attribution problem for UK developers rather than a privacy setting, and it needs the tribunal to accept that Apple's own ad business never cleared the same bar.
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The practical result of Monday's reshuffle is that store rules, developer pricing and antitrust concessions report up through the executive whose division books the store's revenue. Developers are negotiating with a different desk now.
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Invest · September 1, 2026 · Confirmed2 publishers