Epic Games, maker of Fortnite, submitted the game to Apple on Friday, May 9, in the hope of seeing it quickly restored to the Apple App Store, and from there to millions of iPhones. But now, Epic has said that Apple has blocked it.
“Apple has blocked our Fortnite submission so we cannot release to the U.S. App Store or to the Epic Games Store for iOS in the European Union. Now, sadly, Fortnite on iOS will be offline worldwide until Apple unblocks it,” Fortnite said on May 16 in a post on X.
There are two parts to that statement. First, it seems obvious that Apple hasn’t approved the newly submitted app for the App Store — it looks like that is what Epic means by it being blocked. There’s no word from Apple as to why it hasn’t done this, yet.
The version Epic submitted had two payment options, one the conventional way to make in-app purchases through the Apple App Store and the other a new method, to use the Epic Games Store. The Epic Games Store had extra incentives, such as 20% of what you paid back in Epic Rewards. Could it be that Apple feels that this infringes their policies in some way?
After all, it was only when Epic included a direct payment option in the app back in 2020 that it was thrown out of the App Store. All that changed in April this year when a federal judge ruled that Apple could no longer block developers from linking to or advertising external payment methods — full details here.
Perhaps Apple feels there’s still more work to do here. We’ll find out in due course.
Then there’s the second part, referring to the Epic Games Store for iOS, which is restricted to users in the European Union. Since the EU forced Apple to open iOS to rival app stores, many games in those countries have been playing Fortnite — until today. It’s not clear why those players can no longer access Fortnite.
More as we have it.