NEW YORK — Cary-based Epic Games says Fortnite is now unavailable on Apple’s iOS globally because the tech giant blocked a bid to rerelease the popular video game for iPhone users in the U.S. and Europe.
Apple pulled Epic Games-owned Fortnite from its app store in 2020, just two years after the widely popular, multiplayer survival game had launched on iOS and garnered millions of users. iPhone players in the U.S. have been locked out since, although Apple users in the EU have been able to download the game through an alternative store over the last nine months.
Following years of a tense litigation, a recent court ruling was set to clear the way for Fortnite to finally return to iOS users in the U.S. But the video game said last Friday that a move from Apple has prevented that.
“Apple has blocked our Fortnite submission so we cannot release to the U.S. App Store or to the Epic Games Store for iOS in the European Union,” Fortnite wrote on X. “Sadly, Fortnite on iOS will be offline worldwide until Apple unblocks it.”
Apple said it had asked Epic Sweden to resubmit the app update “without including the U.S. storefront of the App Store so as not to impact Fortnite in other geographies.”
But, Apple added, it “did not take any action to remove the live version of Fortnite from alternative distribution marketplaces.”
In the U.S., Epic filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple in 2020, alleging the technology trendsetter was illegally using its power to gouge game makers. After a monthlong trial in 2021, U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled against most of Epic’s claims but ordered Apple to loosen its previously exclusive control over the payments made for in-app commerce and allow links to alternative options in the U.S. for the first time — threatening to undercut sizable commissions that Apple had been collecting from in-app transactions for over a decade.
After exhausting an appeal that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, Apple last year introduced a new system that opened the door for links to alternative payment options while still imposing a 27% commission on in-app transactions executed outside its own system.
Epic fired back by alleging Apple was thumbing its nose at the legal system, reviving another round of court hearings that lasted nearly a year before Gonzalez Rogers delivered a stinging rebuke last month, holding Apple in civil contempt and banning the company from collecting any commission on alternative payment systems.
That ruling cleared the way for Epic to finally return to the iPhone app store in the U.S., a reinstatement the video game maker was anticipating before Apple’s latest move.
