Apple Removes Fortnite From The App Store

Fortnite was launched on iOS a while ago and it has been a huge money maker for Apple, where the game was said to be earning as much as $2 million a day from in-app purchases. We say it’s a money maker for Apple because the company takes a 30% cut from in-app sales, meaning that for almost doing nothing, Apple is earning about $600,000 a day from Fornite alone.

Naturally this hasn’t sat well with Fortnite’s developer, Epic, who recently decided it would be a good idea to launch direct payments within Fortnite, where they priced the sale of their in-game currency, V-Bucks, at a cheaper rate compared to buying it using Apple’s in-app purchase system. Unfortunately, this has upset Apple who has since removed the game from the App Store.

In a statement made to MacRumors, Apple said, “Today, Epic Games took the unfortunate step of violating the ‌App Store‌ guidelines that are applied equally to every developer and designed to keep the store safe for our users. As a result their Fortnite app has been removed from the store. Epic enabled a feature in its app which was not reviewed or approved by Apple, and they did so with the express intent of violating the ‌App Store‌ guidelines regarding in-app payments that apply to every developer who sells digital goods or services.”

However, it seems that this could have been Epic’s plan all along, because the company has since filed a lawsuit against Apple which we imagine is the company’s plan to highlight Apple’s “unreasonable and unlawful restraints to completely monopolize both markets”. Epic isn’t the only company to take issue with Apple’s 30% cut, where in the past, Spotify had also expressed their dissatisfaction, while others like Amazon have completely disabled in-app purchases.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Apple, Cellphones, Gaming
Tags: Apps, epic, fortnite battle royale, iOS, Legal