Epic and Apple Are Fighting Over A Naked Banana (Agent Peely)

Epic vs Apple has just entered its second week and with it comes to my personal favorite leak of the entire court proceedings, the naked banana discussion.

Apple decides to cross-examine a screenshot of the in-game lobby of Fortnite that included Agent Peely, which is basically a banana in a tuxedo. Here's the hilarious breakdown of the discussion from The Verge.

Apple attorney: We have in front of us a new set of images, and what is this screen showing?

Weissinger: This is your matchmaking lobby.

Attorney: And we have a large yellow banana here, don’t we? In a tuxedo?

Weissinger: Yes. That is Peely.

Attorney: And that’s Peely, did you say?

Weissinger: Yeah.

Attorney: And in fact, in the tuxedo, he’s known as Agent Peely, correct?

Weissinger: That’s correct.

Attorney: We thought it better to go with the suit than the naked banana, since we are in federal court this morning.

the “naked banana” line could have possibly been a funny joke by Apple's attorney however last week, Apple claimed Epic hosted porn by allowing users to install Itch.io which includes "so-called adult games” whose descriptions were “not appropriate for us to speak in federal courts,” calling them “both offensive and sexualized.” Firstly, I personally don't see how Epic is accountable for another storefront just because it's accessible via their store. Also, they're using a banana to prove their point, it’s both ironic and hilarious.

Epic’s attorney, later on, decided to revisit Peely during her own questioning of Weissinger:

Epic attorney: A little bit of a digression. We talked about Peely? Our banana? Remember that?

Weissinger: I do.

Attorney: And there might have been an implication that to show Peely without a suit would have been inappropriate. Do you recall that?

Weissinger: Yes.

Attorney: Is there anything inappropriate about Peely without a suit?

Weissinger: No, there is not.

Attorney: If we could just put on the screen a picture of Peely — is there anything inappropriate about Peely without clothes?

Weissinger: It’s just a banana, ma’am.

Epic Vs Apple is one of the biggest lawsuits to happen in the world of gaming and it's shining a light on some of the shady tactics some of these companies use but it also has two companies argue over a naked banana, to quote Weissinger from the proceeds.

It’s just a banana, ma’am.

Gears 5 studio The Coalition Moves to Unreal Engine 5

In an open letter to the Gears community, the Coalition confirmed they will be moving to Unreal Engine 5 for its future projects.

they wrote the following "As we look to future games, we’re excited to start shifting our resources to next-gen development using Unreal Engine 5,"

"Gears of War has always been at the front of Unreal Engine development – as a breakout 720p title for Xbox 360 through last year’s 120FPS multiplayer update for Xbox Series X|S – and we’re excited to continue that tradition by developing on UE5 for multiple new projects in the coming years."

However, this news does have a sour note with Gears 5 will only continue to get new content with Operations 7 and 8. The two new Operations will include new characters, new maps, and new special events. They also teased some store updates and promised it will have "exciting new content."

For the future, however, The Coalition warns that shifting to a new engine is a "big undertaking" and it could be a while before we see anything new from the studio by saying "we want to be clear that we will not be announcing any new projects or titles for some time."

Lastly, the studio confirmed after speculation on Reddit that the new IP they're working on won't be a Star Wars game.

Fall Guys Ultimate Knockout's Xbox And Switch Versions Delayed

Mediatonic has announced that the upcoming release for Xbox and Nintendo Switch versions of Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout will no longer launch in the Summer.

the announcement came from the game's official website, where the studio discussed its recent purchase by Epic Games by saying it offered "so many new opportunities" but also they said, "We've realized that our previously announced Summer 2021 Switch and Xbox release schedule is unfortunately just too soon for us to include all of the tasty new features we're working on."

on a positive note, the team confirmed that the delay will give them the chance to add additional features, which they promised would include crossplay so that Xbox and Nintendo Switch players can play with those on PlayStation 4 and PC.