Epic v Apple trial debates appropriateness of Fortnite's naked banana man Peely
"It's just a banana, ma'am."
It was inevitable: the appropriateness of Fortnite's bizarre banana man Peely has now been discussed in open court.
Last night, in the ongoing Apple v Epic trial, Peely came under scrutiny for being a naked piece of fruit with arms and legs.
In remarks transcribed from the courtroom by Verge reporter Adi Robertson, a lawyer for Apple brought up Peely in court and made a deal of showing the character wearing clothes (his Chapter 2 Season 2 Bond-esque Agent Peely tuxedo).
"We have a large yellow banana here, in a tuxedo?" the lawyer asked.
"Yes, that's Peely," Epic Games' marketing boss Matthew Weissinger replied.
"We thought it was better to go with the suit instead of the naked banana, because we are in federal court right now," Apple's lawyer noted, before going on to ask questions about Peely's exclusivity in certain paid-for battle passes.
Protocol reporter Nick Statt suggested the line of questioning was intended by Apple to "paint Epic as some greedy game company exploiting children and exposing them to lewd content".
However, when Epic's own lawyer later took the stand, the company decided to call out Apple's attack on its banana.
"A little bit of a digression: we talked about Peely, our banana?" Epic's lawyer said. "There might have been an implication that showing Peely without a suit might have been inappropriate.
"Is there anything inappropriate about Peely without clothes?" Epic's lawyer asked Weissinger.
Weissinger replied: "It's just a banana, ma'am."
WARNING: POTENTIALLY NSFW CONTENT FOLLOWS:
Other things of note reported from yesterday's trial proceedings include the fact there is a daily or weekly limit on the number of Fortnite V-Bucks you can purchase (though what limit this was did not get revealed).
Another interesting tidbit was that Epic sold 3.3m NFL skins in a month back in 2018. "3.3m skins at 1500 V-Bucks (roughly $14 as of winter 2018) is close to $50m [for] one set of skins]" Statt estimated. Epic has never disclosed how many of a particular character/item it typically sells, so this is an intriguing insight.