For those who came in late, Epic has been trying to prove how much Apple is running a cartel through its app store by placing an in-game payment system in its popular games. Apple has responded by pulling Fortnite from its App store. 

Now it seems Apple is ramping up the pressure by denying developers access to the store on August 28. Apple has never said that Epic's third party developers have done anything wrong or violated any policy, so it now happy to punish the innocent if it gets back at Epic.

That includes Epic's access to the development tools necessary to create software for the Unreal Engine that Epic offers to third-party developers for their games. In response, Epic has filed a court order asking a Northern California court to stop Apple from removing Epic's ‌App Store‌ access.

The court document says: "Cutting off Epic's access to Mac and iOS developer tools could have a significant impact on all of the apps and games that use Epic's Unreal Engine. Apple in its letter to Epic Games letting it know about the upcoming account closures says that Epic can avoid having its access revoked by following Apple's ‌App Store‌ guidelines."

Epic is asking the court to prevent Apple from taking "any adverse action" against it, including restricting, suspending, or terminating Epic's access to the Apple Developer program. Epic also asks that the court restrain Apple from removing, de-listing, refusing to list, or otherwise making the Fortnite app unavailable, or modifying the Fortnite code.

Epic also released an anti-Apple video based on Apple's famous 1984 ad, which encourages people to "join the fight to stop 2020 from becoming 1984."

At this point in time, Fortnite remains unavailable from the ‌App Store‌, and barring court intervention or a decision to comply with the rules, all of Epic's developer accounts will be terminated at the end of the month.