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Google has reached a tentative settlement with more than 30 US states and 21 million customers who sued the tech giant for allegedly violating antitrust laws by overcharging for apps in the Google Play Store, Reuters reported .

The settlement comes approximately one week after a court revoked the lawsuit's class-action status . Details, including the amount of the settlement, were not disclosed, Reuters reported, but plaintiffs agreed in a court filing yesterday not to oppose the court's decision on the class-action certification. At one point, plaintiffs estimated that Google might owe them $4.7 billion in damages ; however, it was previously reported that losing the class-action status would significantly reduce damages for states and customers suing.

Nothing will be finalized until the settlement is approved by the State Attorneys General and Google owner Alphabet Inc’s board of directors. After that, a long-form settlement agreement must be reached before final approval by the court.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | NurPhoto)

The Supreme Court Wednesday ruled that a federal judge's injunction against Apple would not be allowed to take effect immediately, rather than waiting for Apple's own Supreme Court appeal. That means Fortnite- maker Epic Games and other developers in Apple's App Store will still be barred from pointing customers to outside purchase points to avoid Apple's commission.

Justice Elena Kagan, who handles emergency petitions for California and other states, turned down Epic's request, as seen on the case's Supreme Court page (and initially reported by Reuters , among others). Epic's application stems from a complex series of rulings related to Epic's initial 2020 lawsuit . Apple had largely won in decisions from a district court in 2022 , and then the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in April . Those decisions found that Apple's policies that iOS apps only be available through its App Store, and those apps only use its own in-app payment systems, did not violate antitrust rules.

The 9th Circuit court did, however, affirm a lower-court decision that there was anti-steering language in Apple's developer agreement. Prohibiting developers from pointing to outside purchase methods violated California's Unfair Competition Law, the courts ruled. The 9th Circuit allowed an injunction prohibiting Apple from enforcing its anti-steering language to remain in place but put a stay on it until a potential Apple appeal to the Supreme Court had run its course.

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Enlarge / Fortnite on an iPhone... back when that was a thing. (credit: Savusia Konstantin | Getty Images )

Epic Games, maker of Fortnite , is loading up a new map in its ongoing fight against Apple as it files an antitrust complaint against the mobile phone maker in the European Union.

Epic alleges in its complaint that Apple uses its sole control over iOS apps to block competitors and benefit itself at developers' expense in violation of European competition law, the company said today.

"What’s at stake here is the very future of mobile platforms," Epic CEO Tim Sweeney said in a written statement. "We will not stand idly by and allow Apple to use its platform dominance to control what should be a level digital playing field. It’s bad for consumers, who are paying inflated prices due to the complete lack of competition among stores and in-app payment processing. And it’s bad for developers, whose very livelihoods often hinge on Apple’s complete discretion as to who to allow on the iOS platform, and on which terms."

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Epic Games don't support Linux with their store, so the community continues building around it with the Heroic Games Launcher that can run plenty of games from the Epic Store. It does so thanks to the power of the Wine compatibility layer, giving you as many options as possible to keep on gaming on Linux no matter where your games are from. A great free and open source project.

New features added in recently released versions include: the ability to repair installed games, notifications support, a tray icon with the ability to close to the tray, it will remember the filters used, a warning on closing when downloading, a download time estimate on game pages, styling tweaks for light and dark themes, new options to enable extra features like MangoHud, the ability to add launch options and more.

Here's what it currently looks like:

The amount of improvements and overall work going into the Heroic Games Launcher really is impressive. It seems to be quite smooth, and makes using the EGS mostly painless.

Note: while it currently supports the Epic Games Store thanks to using another bit of open source named Legendary , they do have plans to expand to cover other stores too so that it can become an all-in-one solution for gaming on Linux. So, eventually it might be a bit like Lutris.

Find it up on GitHub .

Epic Games latest acquisition is RAD Game Tools , one a great many game developers will be familiar with. As confirmed on the official Epic Games news post , the plan is to integrate RAD tooling into Unreal Engine.

RAD tooling is used by close to 25,000 games, according to the post, making it massively popular. Probably the most well-known of their tools by gamers is Bink Video and you might have seen a logo of it across some of your favourite games going back to the 90's.

As graphics in game development and beyond become more photorealistic and powerful, developers need best-in-class compression software that can manage increased data requirements without compromising quality. Members of the RAD team will partner closely with Epic’s rendering, animation, insights, and audio teams, integrating key tech and improvements across Unreal Engine and beyond. RAD and Epic combining forces will allow even more developers access to tools that make their games load and download faster, and offer their players a better, higher quality video and gaming experience.

Epic Games

The good news is that Epic will not be locking it down to their systems. As the post explains, RAD will continue supporting and selling licenses for their products across all industries and those that don't use Unreal Engine.

So now Epic Games own Psyonix (Rocket League), Quixel (Megascans), SuperAwesome (kids digital media ecosystem), Hyprsense (facial motion capture), Easy Anti-Cheat and no doubt that list will grow.

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