The Apple vs. Epic fiasco is far from over, as Epic’s response to Apple’s opposition brief brought about new developments. Apple recently claimed that Epic Games had filed the lawsuit against them as a massive PR stunt and as a ‘marketing campaign’ for Fortnite. To support the claim, Apple presented data that showed Fortnite’s popularity had seen a decline of around 70%, by July 2020, in comparison to October last year.

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“…Apple cherry-picked Google Trends data concerning Google search volumes”: Epic Games

Epic countered Apple’s claims by saying that the comparison between July 2020 and October 2019 is not valid. If fans remember October, 2019 saw a major event in Fortnite, which was the Black Hole event that ended Chapter 1 of the game. The event had fetched player traffic in massive numbers. Compared to that, the search activity for Fortnite is less in June 2020, and for good reason.

Epic Games accused Apple of ‘cherry-picking’ data to support their claims.

“…Apple cherry-picked Google Trends data concerning Google search volumes, misleadingly starting from a one-week spike that took place in October 2019 when Epic ran an in-game event that captured global attention… Epic’s actual user engagement data reflecting the actual number of users playing Fortnite (not Google search results) shows Apple’s claim of declining interest in Fortnite to be incorrect.”

Fortnite is undoubtedly still one of the most popular Battle Royale titles out there. The fact that devs have been adding more features and gameplay elements is testimony to that fact. The game still has an ever-growing community. Although the game has lost a major chunk of its player base due to the whole fiasco, it has managed to win back a portion of it with the current Marvel-themed season.