The video game Fortnite is back on mobile phones, four years after Apple and Google removed it from their app stores. Android users worldwide can install the game, as well as two new titles from publisher Epic Games, by downloading the company’s new app store.
However, only iPhone users in the EU can follow suit, as Epic is the most high-profile company to date to adopt the looser restrictions imposed on Apple by the Digital Markets Act (DMA).
All three games will also be available on the Alt Store PAL, the largest of the independent app stores introduced in the EU under Apple’s new terms, said Tim Sweeney, founder of Epic Games.
“We are really grateful to the European Commission for not only passing the DMA law, which allows competition between stores, but also for really stepping in and putting strong pressure on Apple and Google to make sure they can’t just hamper competition,” Sweeney added.
The relaunch of Fortnite is the culmination of a years-long dispute between Sweeney, who controls Epic Games as the company’s majority owner, and the mobile platforms over whether the latter should be entitled to a share of the revenue generated by players using their devices.
In 2020, Epic took unilateral action and updated Fortnite so that users could pay for in-game items directly through the company’s servers, avoiding a mandatory 30% fee for using Apple and Google’s standard payment processing. In response, both companies blocked the game from their app stores, sparking a fierce legal battle.
But the relaunch is not the end of Epic’s struggle, Sweeney said. Both companies still force their users to go through “scary screens” before they can install the company’s alternative app store. On an iPhone, it takes 15 clicks to launch the Epic Games Store and one to launch the Apple Store.
Epic is also looking to make Fortnite available to UK mobile users again following the UK’s passage of legislation similar to the EU’s DMA – the Digital Markets Competition and Consumers Act 2024 – in May this year.
“Unless Apple and Google succeed in lobbying the UK government to continue blocking competition, we should make progress on this by the end of next year,” Sweeney said.
Even as regulations have forced Apple to loosen its control over what iPhone users can do with their devices, the company continues to tighten the screws elsewhere. Patreon, a creator economy service that allows fans to support individual artists, writers and musicians with monthly subscriptions, has been ordered to end a nearly decade-long exemption from Apple’s 30 percent fee.
Patreon told users on Monday: “Apple is requiring Patreon to use (its) in-app purchasing system and remove all other billing systems from the Patreon iOS app by November 2024. Apple will collect its 30% App Store fee on all new memberships purchased in the Patreon iOS app, in addition to all purchases in the Patreon Store.”
Patreon creators (users) have the choice to either add the 30% to their standard subscription fee or make up the loss with the 15% they already pay to Patreon itself.
