Epic Games to Bring Back Fortnite on iOS Next Week After Winning Court Case Against Apple

Tim Sweeney, the founder and CEO of Epic Games, announced on Twitter that Fortnite is coming back to the App Store after Epic won its recent lawsuit against the iPhone maker.

“We will return Fortnite to the US iOS App Store next week,” Sweeney mentioned on his tweet. He continued by offering Apple a way out of Epic’s legal actions against them. “Epic puts forth a peace proposal: 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.”

This tweet was posted after the court of the Northern District of California issued the ruling, which favored Epic. The court found Apple in willful violation of the court’s 2021 injunction, which ordered the company to stop its anticompetitive practices on the Apple Store.

According to the ruling, after the 2021 trial, Apple’s 30% commission on all sales of apps in the store was found to be anticompetitive by the court. Apple’s response was to charge a 27% commission on off-app purchases when they previously charged nothing, which is anticompetitive.

The court has also prohibited Apple from dissuading customers from using other purchasing mechanisms. While Apple finally allowed off-app purchases, they introduced scare screens, static URLs, and generic statements that can dissuade users from continuing with it.

“In stark contrast to Apple’s initial in-court testimony, contemporaneous business documents reveal that Apple knew exactly what it was doing and at every turn chose the most anticompetitive option,” the court document read.

Additionally, the court found that Alex Roman, the Vice-President of Finance at Apple, has lied under oath. As such, the court forwarded the case to the United States Attorney for the Northern District of California for an investigation to see whether criminal contempt proceedings are needed.

The Epic Games vs. Apple cases started in 2021 when Epic Games deliberately tried to circumvent Apple’s restrictions on apps having off-app purchases. This resulted in Fortnite getting banned on the App Store. What followed was Epic filing a lawsuit against Apple, and the latter filing a countersuit.

The judge ruled in favor of Apple during the 2021 lawsuit, however, Apple was ordered to remove all anticompetitive practices in the App Store. The changes Apple made did not sit right with Epic, which led to Epic filing another lawsuit against Apple in 2024, saying that Apple’s update was not sufficient.