It’s been quite some time since Fortnite was last available on the App Store of Apple. What had previously been a cordial cooperation took a turn for the worst when Epic Games introduced its own payment option inside the game itself.
Despite the fact that the action seemed to be benign at first glance, it was quite aggressive from a commercial sense. Being able to use its own payment mechanism resulted in lower costs for gamers, but it also forced Apple out of transactions, something that the tech giant evidently did not like.
Apple requests a percentage of in-game purchases made via its App Store for applications and games. Epic considered this to be anti-competitive.
The repercussions were felt almost immediately. Epic Games was unable to publish fixes for any of its apps on Apple products after Apple banned Fortnite first from App Store and canceled all of the developer accounts belonging to the company. This means that gamers who already had Epic games loaded on their phones would’ve been able to keep playing them, but they would not be able to obtain any new material from the publisher. Due to the passage of time and the businesses’ subsequent decision to go to trial in an attempt to resolve the situation, some gamers have legitimately questioned if Fortnite will ever be available on Apple’s App Store again.
The lawsuit
Until December 2021, according to the court that was hearing the lawsuit between Apple and Epic, Apple must enable developers to give links that would drive users to alternate payment ways for in-app transactions until the issue was resolved. While it seems that Epic was in the right and that it had won the case, the firm was ordered to reimburse Apple for all of the money that had been lost as a result of the legal dispute. Epic believed this to be a defeat and filed an appeal as soon as possible.
The solution to this issue is totally up to Apple. Given that Apple now requires developers to include links to other payment sources in their applications, Epic may potentially re-enter the App Store with its updated payment options.
Epic consented to follow the guidelines and was preparing to bring Fortnite to Apple devices, but Apple is presently refusing to provide admission to Fortnite or really any Epic product.
