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Epic Games maintains that Apple has ignored the court’s injunction regarding the App Store’s anti-steering Anti Steering regulations, and has detailed in documents filed with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California how Apple has circumvented the ruling, making it much less effective in practice, appleinsider reports.

Epic says that despite the court’s ruling that developers can steer users to external payment channels, Apple has essentially rendered that option null and void through additional fees and strict limitations.

Epic says Apple chose to go the other way by launching a so-called external link purchase authorization program, which was so illogical in its design that developers and users were discouraged from using it, and accuses Apple of a strategy of choosing, at every step, the option that is most detrimental to developers and consumers in order to ensure that its own profits are not affected.

Epic further points out that not only does Apple charge a commission of 27, but it also severely restricts how developers can direct users to external payment channels. For example, Apple prohibits developers from using buttons or any kind of call-to-action, and can only provide plain text links.

The documents also reveal internal management discussions about external payment commissions. Phil Schiller, head of Apple’s App Store, has said that additional commissions could put Apple in violation of the court injunction. But because the company’s financial analysts predicted that Apple could lose billions of dollars if it didn’t take a commission on external payments, then CFO Luca Maestri Luca Maestri ultimately backed the decision to charge a commission, and CEO Tim Cook Tim Cook followed suit by approving the program.

Epic notes that even if Apple adjusts that commission rate to 27, the actual cost to developers could be higher than if they used the App Store’s payment system directly, due to additional transaction fees for external payment channels.

Epic also criticized Apple for using various tactics to discourage users from using external payments, including restricting the design, placement, and copy of external links to make it difficult for users to find these options, and popping up a full-screen warning page when users click on an external payment link to discourage them with scare tactics, and prohibiting developers from using dynamic links, forcing them to provide only fixed jump pages, further degrading the user experience. Epic claims that these practices work in tandem to maximize Apple’s profits, even if it means violating court injunctions.

Epic points out that Apple launched similar external payment licensing programs in the Netherlands and South Korea, but few developers were willing to join due to high fees and complex restrictions. In the Netherlands, only one developer applied to use the program after 10 months of operation, and in South Korea, only one developer joined in four months, according to the data.

Epic concludes its filing by urging the court to re-examine Apple’s compliance and take further steps to ensure that the injunction actually takes effect.

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