The video game Fortnite is back on mobile phones, four years after Apple and Google pulled it from their app stores. Android users worldwide can install the game, along with two new titles from the publisher, Epic Games, by downloading the company’s new app store.
However, only iPhone users in the EU can follow suit as Epic becomes the highest profile company yet to adopt the looser restrictions forced on Apple by the Digital Markets Act (DMA).
All three games will also be available on Alt Store PAL, the largest of the independent App Stores launched in the EU under Apple’s new terms, said Tim Sweeney, the founder of Epic Games.
“We’re really grateful to the European Commission for not only passing the DMA law, enabling store competition, but also really going in and robustly holding Apple and Google’s feet to the fire to ensure they can’t just obstruct competition,” Sweeney added.
The relaunch of Fortnite is the culmination of a years-long battle between Sweeney, who controls Epic Games with majority ownership of the company, and the mobile platforms, over whether the latter should be entitled to a cut of the revenue generated from gamers who use their devices.
In 2020, Epic took unilateral action, updating Fortnite to let users pay for in-game items directly through the company’s servers, avoiding a 30% mandatory fee for using the standard Apple and Google payment processing. In response, both companies blocked the game from their App Stores, sparking a furious exchange of litigation.
But the relaunch was not the end of Epic’s fight, Sweeney said. Both companies still force users through “scare screens” before letting them install the company’s alternative App Store; it requires 15 clicks to launch the Epic Games Store on an iPhone and one to launch Apple’s store.
Epic is also aiming to make Fortnite available to UK mobile users again, after legislation similar to the EU’s DMA – the Digital Markets Competition and Consumers Act 2024– passed into law in the UK this May.
“Unless Apple and Google manage to lobby the UK government that they should be able to continue blocking competition, we should be able to move on that by the end of next year,” Sweeney said.
Even as Apple has been forced by regulations to loosen its control over what iPhone users can do with their devices, the company continues to turn the screws elsewhere. Patreon, a creator economy service that allows fans to back individual artists, writers and musicians with monthly subscriptions, has been instructed to end a nearly decade-long exception from Apple’s 30% fee.
Patreon told users on Monday: “Apple is requiring that Patreon use [its] in-app purchasing system and remove all other billing systems from the Patreon iOS app by November 2024. Apple will be applying their 30% App Store fee to all new memberships purchased in the Patreon iOS app, in addition to anything bought in [the] Patreon shop.”
Patreon creators (users) have a choice of either adding the 30% on top of their standard subscription charge, or absorbing the loss with the fee, of up to 12%, that they already pay to Patreon itself.
• This article was amended on 27 August 2024. The fee paid by creators to Patreon is up to 12%, not 15% as an earlier version said.
