Epic Games Fortnite asks judge to force apple to approve on iOS

Photo Credit: Epic Games

Epic Games asks the court to require Apple to accept Fortnite onto the US version of the App Store. The two companies have been locked in a years-long legal battle over the mobile giant’s App Store policies.

Fortnite publisher Epic Games is further escalating its attempts to force Apple to allow its game onto the App Store. The game company submitted a new filing requesting Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers to force Apple to accept “any compliant version of Fortnite onto the US storefront of the App Store.”

Epic Games scored a major victory in its multi-year legal battle with Apple over the company’s App Store policies, namely the commissions Apple charges for in-app purchases. Judge Rogers ruled in Epic Games’ favor that Apple was in “willful violation” of an injunction of anticompetitive pricing, which seemingly set the stage for Fortnite’s return to Apple devices.

But Apple said it would appeal the ruling. Further, Epic Games says the company is still blocking Fortnite from both the US App Store and preventing it from being released on the Epic Games store in Europe. As a result, Epic Games announced that Fortnite on iOS would be offline worldwide until Apple unblocks it.

Apple claims it hasn’t been blocking Fortnite outside the United States, and instead asked Epic Sweden to “resubmit the app update without including the US storefront of the App Store so as to not impact Fortnite in other geographies.” But that still begs the question: why block Fortnite in the US?

According to a letter signed by Mark A. Perry, an attorney for Apple, the company has “determined not to take action on the Fortnite app submission until after the Ninth Circuit rules on our pending request for a partial stay of the new injunction.”

Meanwhile, in Epic’s filing, it asserts that Apple is denying it the opportunity to “take advantage of the pro-competitive rules it helped usher in.” Further, Epic claims Apple is “punishing” the game publisher by “shutting it out of the very market it has fought so hard to open—while sending a clear message to other developers not to challenge Apple’s policies.”

Apple’s letter states that if Epic “believes there is some factual or legal development that warrants further consideration of this position, please let us know in writing.” In the meantime, Apple intends to sit on its laurels on the matter until the court decides on its appeal.