5 Years Later, ‘Fortnite’ Is Coming Back On iPhones But The Epic V. Apple Fight’s Not Over

Fortnite may finally be returning to the App Store on iOS nearly five years after its removal, following one of the most dramatic developments in a long-running legal battle between Epic Games and Apple. A District Court in California has ruled that Apple “willfully violated” a previous court order, ordering it to stop collecting fees on payments made outside the App Store, and as a result, Epic Games says Fortnite will be coming back to iPhones in the United States.

Back in 2021, a court ruled that Apple must allow app makers to accept payments outside of the App Store. Apple complied, but later began collecting a 27 percent fee on those purchases, just barely less than the 30 percent cut it takes on App Store purchases. In a decision on April 30, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said that those fees violate the court’s earlier decision, and held the company in contempt on the grounds that it had “outright lied under oath” about implementing them.

“This is an injunction, not a negotiation,” Judge Gonzalez Rogers said. “The Court enjoins Apple from implementing its new anticompetitive acts to avoid compliance with the Injunction. Effective immediately Apple will no longer impede developers’ ability to communicate with users nor will they levy or impose a new commission on off-app purchases.”

The most immediate consequence will be the return of Fortnite to the App Store. The legal battle between Epic and Apple began when Epic integrated its own payment system into Fortnite to bypass Apple’s own. That resulted in Apple removing Fortnite from the App Store, since at the time, that was against the company’s policies. A new law called the Digital Markets Act went into effect in the European Union in 2024, which required Apple to allow third-party storefronts there, but no such law exists in the U.S.

With the latest ruling, Epic must be allowed to integrate its own payment system into Fortnite without being subject to additional fees from Apple. Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney responded by announcing that Fortnite will be returning to the U.S. App Store as early as soon as possible.

“We will return Fortnite to the US iOS App Store next week,” Sweeney wrote on social media, going so far as to lay out conditions for ending its suit against Apple. “If Apple extends the court’s friction-free, Apple-tax-free framework worldwide, we’ll return Fortnite to the App Store worldwide and drop current and future litigation on the topic.”

The judge also referred the case to a U.S. Attorney to decide whether to proceed with criminal contempt charges against Apple. Apple says it will comply with the judge’s ruling, but will be filing an appeal.

If the ruling stands, it could have major implications for developers on the App Store. Apple cannot levy fees on purchases made outside the App Store, but it goes much further than that. App makers must be allowed to include links to third-party sites, and Apple can’t dictate how those links are styled, or show anything other than a “neutral message” letting users know they’re leaving an official Apple site. Previously, Apple displayed messages warning that following links to outside payment services could be dangerous, which Epic criticized at the time they were added.

Given that Apple has already announced plans to appeal the court’s latest decision, it’s unlikely the company will take Sweeney up on the offer to drop its fees worldwide in exchange for an end to the suit. But for now at least, players in the U.S. will once again be able to play Fortnite on iOS through the App Store — and Epic is sure to make the most of that fact now it can claim 100 percent of the game’s revenue through its own payment system.