The Supreme Court’s recent refusal to hear an appeal from both Apple and Epic Games on different aspects of a lower court’s ruling means consumers won’t see many changes to their app downloading and purchasing experience. But the high court’s silence is a blow to some software developers who were hoping to shift more revenue from Apple’s coffers to their own pockets. 

Epic’s yearslong case against Apple charged that its app store was an illegal monopoly. It asked a federal district court in California to force Apple to allow “sideloading,” the downloading of an app directly from a developer’s website or a competing app store. And to allow developers to communicate with end-users about options for in-app purchases, effectively cutting Apple out of the revenue from those fees.