After Five Year Ban, ‘Fortnite’ Finally Returns To Apple App Store
After being removed from the App Store in 2020, a lengthy court battle that would shape the store’s policies, and allegations that Apple were intentionally dragging their feet on with its approval, Fortnite has finally returned to the App Store.
Back in 2020, Epic Games attempted to sell V-Bucks directly to iOS players, in doing so allowing the developer a way to circumvent Apple’s standard 30% App Store revenue cut.
With this being a violation of their Terms of Service, Apple quickly removed Fortnite, the decision eventuially leading to a lengthy court battle where Epic Games argued that the tech giant had established an unfair monopoly over their own store.
Though Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, in her April 30th judgement, mostly sided with Apple, she did make one ruling in Epic Games’ favor, finding that Apple had indeed been too harsh in their policing.
As such, she ordered Apple to allow other devs to link to other stores, players to be informed of alternate stores, drop their 27% commission on purchases via web links, and pay Epic Games’ legal fees.
In the aftermath, Epic Games resubmitted Fortnite to the App Store on May 9th.
And though a forthcoming update caused an understandable delay in Apple’s approval process, the popular battle royale was still absent from the App Store after a week and half – A far cry from Apple’s own promise, per their App Review page, that “on average, 90% of submissions are reviewed in less than 24 hours.”
Frustrated with Apple’s delay, Epic Games proceeded to make another filing with the Oakland District Court of California, therein claiming that the iPhone and iPad producer had violated the court’s orders.
After a review, Judge Rogers ordered Apple to either comply with her previous ruling or “show cause as to why the motion should not be granted”, particularly by citing “the legal authority upon which [the company] contends that it can ignore this Court’s order.”
Perhaps sensing another legal battle, this time against the law itself, Apple ultimately chose to throw in the towel and once again make Fortnite available for iOS mobile devices.
Regarding the issue at the center of the monumental tech industry legal battle, the iOS version of Fortnite does in fact allow players to buy V-Bucks from Epic Games, as the developer had initially wanted.
In seeking to entice players to choose the direct purchase option, Epic Games announced earlier this month that their signature ‘Epic Rewards’ program, which gives players a portion of their purchases on the platform back to them for use in the Epic Game Store, would be permanently boosted from 5% to 20% back.
Offering his first statement on his company’s legal victory, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney took to his personal X account the day after Fortnite‘s iOS return and tweeted out a succinct ‘We back fam‘.
Later in the day, he returned to the platform to give a more substantial statement, declaring to his followers, “Thanks to everyone who supported the effort to open up mobile competition and #FreeFortnite from the very beginning. And thanks to all of the folks who initially sided with Apple then later came around to the winning side, supporting app developer rights and consumer rights.”
And so, without further ado, Fortnite players can now freely download the popular battle royale – with full cross-platform progression and access to one’s own library of cosmetics – to their respective Apple devices.
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