Or vice versa…
Tech giant Apple has removed Epic Games’ Fortnite from the App Store because the Cary-based company started offering players the option to pay Epic directly for in-game purchases rather than going through the App Store, defying Apple’s standard 30% fee. As a result, Epic Games filed a lawsuit against Apple. We are expected to see a “hell of a fight,” as Tim Sweeney, Founder and CEO of Epic Games, said in a tweet. And he kept his word!
It’s time to bring out the big guns, so Epic Games decided to mock Apple by parodying it’s famous “1984” ad. The Cupertino-based company’s campaign is a reference to Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 and the “Two Minutes Hate” scene. The video introduced the Apple Macintosh personal computer but, in an IBM-dominated era. The scene opens up with a series of people marching towards a place where “Big Brother” delivers a message.
The images of zombie-like participants are interrupted by a girl who doesn’t seem to be part of the same brain-washed people. She’s wearing red athletic shorts and a white tank top that has printed, in a cubist manner, a picture of Apple’s Macintosh computer. She is followed by some police officers who fail to catch her on time, as the sledgehammer she wears in her hand is used to destroy the big screen where Big Brother keeps his speech.
We can only assume that Big Blue, IBM’s nickname, is actually the villain of the story as Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, indirectly said that in a speech: “Will Big Blue dominate the entire computer industry? The entire information age? Was George Orwell right about 1984?”
Four decades after the Apple commercial aired, Epic Games decided to go on and use the same scenario, slightly changing some of its content. With its “Nineteen Eighty-Fortnite” video, the American video game and software developer basically turned the famous ad in their favor. It is pretty similar to the original one with the mention that the whole action of the replica is animated in a Fortnite-like graphic design. The man on the big screen that keeps his speech is represented by a huge apple head, that appears to look very much like the Apple logo featuring the “bitten” mark, to which Fortnite added a worm that it is making room to get out of the fruit. Well, this is an Easter Egg we have discovered by ourselves. But there are a lot more others you should definitely look for in the video!
“Epic Games has defied the App Store Monopoly. In retaliation, Apple is blocking Fortnite from a billion devices,” the video concludes, kindly urging gamers “to join the fight to stop 2020 from becoming ‘1984’.” Epic Games announced that Fortnite is available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC, GeForce Now, and the Epic Games app on Android.
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