Epic Games’ mega-popular Fortnite is promising a return to the U.S. iOS App Store next week after a surprising ruling in a years-long legal battle with Apple.
The dispute between Epic and Apple began in 2020, when Apple removed Epic Games from the iOS App Store. Because Apple takes 30% of all in-app purchases, Epic had introduced support for direct payments in Fortnite to bypass Apple’s fee. The following year, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled that Apple could not prevent developers like Epic from adding links for customers to buy digital goods outside of the iOS ecosystem to avoid forking over the 30% fee.
But nearly four years later, on Wednesday evening, the same judge said in a ruling that Apple was in “willful violation” of the injunction that allowed developers to refer customers to payment methods that aren’t subject to Apple’s fees.
“That it thought this Court would tolerate such insubordination was a gross miscalculation. As always, the coverup made it worse. For this Court, there is no second bite at the apple,” Rogers said.
Even at the time of the 2021 ruling, Fortnite did not return to the iOS App Store. At the time, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney said the app would return when it could offer “in-app payment in fair competition with Apple in-app payment, passing along the savings to consumers.”
But after Rogers’ unexpected ruling this week, Sweeney said that Fortnite will finally be available again for iOS users in the US.
“Apple’s 15-30% junk fees are now just as dead here in the United States of America as they are in Europe under the Digital Markets Act. Unlawful here, unlawful there,” Sweeney wrote, noting that it had taken four years, four months, and seventeen days to get to this point.
However, Sweeney is pushing Apple to extend the U.S. ruling worldwide before bringing Fortnite back to the App Store globally. That’s something that Apple seems unlikely to do, given it’s planning to appeal this ruling.
