New York – Fortnite says that it is not available in Apple’s iOS worldly because the technological giant blocked an offer to replace the popular video game for iPhone users in the United States and Europe, marking the last turn in a dispute of years.
Apple Fortnite owned by retired epic games Since his App Store in 2020, only two years after the widely popular multiplayer survival game had been launched in iOS and obtained millions of users. Iphone players in the United States have been blocked since then, although Apple users had been able to download the game through an alternative store in the last nine months.
After years of a tense litigation, a Recent Court Fall I was ready to clean the way for Fortnite to finally return to iOS users in the United States as well. But the video game said early that an Apple movement has prevented it, and, as a result, Fortnite says that it is now dark worldwide.
“Apple has blocked our Fortnite submission so we cannot launch in the US Application Store wrote in xThe platform previously known as Twitter. “Unfortunately, Fortnite in iOS will be offline worldwide until Apple unlocks it.”
In a statement sent to Associated Press, Apple said that I had asked Epic Sweden to present the update of the application “not including the US App Store store so as not to affect Fortnite in other geographies.” Sweden is where the EPIC developer is based for its alternative application store.
But, Apple added, “he did not take any action to eliminate the live version of Fortnite from the alternative distribution markets.”
Epic did not immediately respond to a request for further comments.
In the United States, Epic filed an antimonopoly demand against Apple in 2020, claiming that the technological trend stendset was illegally using its power for game manufacturers. After a one -month trial in 2021, the American district judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled against most Epic statementsbut he ordered Apple to loosen its previously exclusive control over payments made for trade in the application and allow links to alternative options in the US for the first time, threatening to undermine considerable commissions that Apple had been collecting transactions in the application for more than a decade.
After exhausting an appeal that was All the way to the United States Supreme CourtLast year, Apple introduced a new system that opened the door for links to alternative payment options while imposed by a 27% commission in transactions in the application executed outside its own system.
Epic shot at claiming that Apple was making demonstration in the legal system, Relive another round of judicial audiences which lasted almost a year before González Rogers delivered a Pictar reprimands last month – That he kept Apple in civil contempt and prohibited the company from raising any alternative payment systems commission.
That decision cleared the way for Epic to finally return to the iPhone application store in the US. early Before the last Apple movement.
Fortnite’s availability in the EU, meanwhile, is under an alternative store for iPhone users, now called Epic Games Store. Apple cleared the way For this last year under new regulatory pressures. Before Friday, Fortnite and other epic games had been available to download on iPhones using this store in the EU since August 2024.
Before the prolonged legal battle of the companies, Epic launched Fortnite in iOS in April 2018. Between then and its removal of August 2020, 116 million users agreed to Fortnite on iOS devices, a note of presentations of the company, collecting an average daily of approximately 2.5 million players, who represented approximately 10% of the daily daily traffic of Fortnite at the time.
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Liedtke reported from San Francisco.
