'Fortnite' will finally return to the iOS App Store

For nearly five years, Fortnite has not been natively playable on iPhones. That could change as soon as next week.

Fortnite developer Epic Games, via founder and CEO Tim Sweeney on X, announced that the game would return to the iOS App Store in the U.S. next week. This comes half a decade after the game was unceremoniously dropped from Apple devices due to a dispute between Apple and Epic over Apple's policy of taking a commission on in-app purchases. That turned into an ongoing legal battle between the two companies, and a Wednesday court order in Epic's favor prompted the decision to bring Fortnite back to iPhones.

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In case you haven't been following along, the short version is that Apple likes to take as much as 30 percent off the top of all in-app purchases, and Fortnite got booted from the App Store because Epic sidestepped that process by encouraging users to make purchases on Epic's website instead. Apple was eventually ordered by the courts to stop blocking third-party apps from linking to alternative payment options.

However, Wednesday's ruling found that Apple had allegedly been charging a 27 percent commission on out-of-app purchases, alongside other measures meant to deter users from paying for things that way. Apple is now held in contempt of court over all of this and has been ordered to stop. To make matters even more inconvenient for Apple, Sweeney said Fortnite will return to the App Store globally and the case will be dropped...only as long as Apple extends the court-ordered policy to its global App Store operations.

The ball is in Apple's court now, I guess.