Fortnite has now reapplied to be listed in Apple’s App Store after its lengthy legal battle against the tech giant that resulted in meaningful judgements against its practices involving an inescapable 30% tax on app revenue.
Epic resubmitted Fortnite to the App Store, which it famously got purposefully banned previously for listing alternate payment options in order to prove a point and kick off the lawsuit, but 100 hours after submission, which took place on Friday, March 9, there is still no word about its readmission, which is highly unusual for the App Store. Epic’s Tim Sweeney responded to a question on Twitter about readmission today saying there is “no news.”
Apple’s own developer website says that 90% of its App Store submissions get approved within 24 hours, so this is certainly well out of that window at this point. There are some instances where if you submit on a Friday, there are delays because of the weekend but A) Apple has to know how high profile this submission is and how it’s a unique case and B) it’s now Tuesday, meaning it went all through Monday without giving an answer.
Fortnite has not been in the iOS App Store since 2020 now, almost hard to believe given that it felt like this had just happened yesterday. But that’s how long this legal battle has been, and how long it’s taken to produce a meaningful result in the case that ended in a scathing opinion from a judge about Apple’s behavior. The result is that Apple cannot block developers for linking to or advertising external payment methods which will get around Apple’s cut. That’s exactly what Epic did to get banned, even having the price be lower overall to push players out of the Apple ecosystem.
What happens now? Apple is not legally required to re-admit Fortnite, but the questions now are whether Apple is going to nitpick some specific thing to deny the app that caused all this, or whether Fortnite has somehow pushed the bounds of the results of the case to twist the knife even further. But we simply do not know what’s happening behind the scenes.
If Apple fails to re-admit Fortnite this will kick off an entirely new chapter of this saga, as Epic’s Sweeney has outright gone to war with Apple over these practices and I’m sure he has a plan B in reserve if Fortnite is denied yet again. We’ll see how long it takes for either an admission or rejection this week, if there’s not news today.
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