Fortnite Returns to Apple’s App Store After Scoring a Legal Victory

Apple restored the popular game Fortnite to the App Store in the United States on Tuesday, nearly five years after it was kicked out of the store and its developer sued the tech giant in an antitrust case.

The reinstatement of Fortnite, a multiplayer video game with millions of daily users around the world, is the result of recent twists in a long-running federal court battle.

Last month, a judge with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that Apple cannot reject apps for including links to outside payment methods that enable developers to avoid the 30 percent commission that the App Store charges on many app sales.

Apple told the game’s developer, Epic Games, days later that it had the contractual right to reject an app from the store, court documents show. But Epic said that Apple was circumventing the ruling.

On Monday, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers called on Apple to reinstate Fortnite to the App Store or return to court to prove it had a legal basis for not doing so. The next day, Fortnite was back on iPhones and iPads in the United States, and Epic and Apple signed a joint statement to the court saying they had resolved that particular dispute.

Representatives for Epic and Apple did not comment late Tuesday.

Their fight began in 2020, when the game maker started encouraging users of the Fortnite iOS app to pay it directly, rather than through the App Store. It also gave Android users instructions for getting around Google’s payment system.