Fortnite may finally be returning to the App Store on iOS nearly five years after its removal, following one of the most dramatic developments in a long-running legal battle between Epic Games and Apple. A District Court in California has ruled that Apple “willfully violated” a previous court order, ordering it to stop collecting fees on payments made outside the App Store, and as a result, Epic Games says Fortnite will be coming back to iPhones in the United States.
Back in 2021, a court ruled that Apple must allow app makers to accept payments outside of the App Store. Apple complied, but later began collecting a 27 percent fee on those purchases, just barely less than the 30 percent cut it takes on App Store purchases. In a decision on April 30, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said that those fees violate the court’s earlier decision, and held the company in contempt on the grounds that it had “outright lied under oath” about implementing them.
