In addition to its Xbox drama, Apple has also been busy battling with Fortnite creator Epic Games. Epic has expressed frustration with the tech giant over its 30% fee on all sales made through the App Store, which includes all games and in-app DLC purchases. Luckily, Epic recently announced a permanent 20% discount on all Fortnite v-buck purchases across consoles, PC, and yes, mobile. Although fans found their wallets liberated, Apple saw it as a stab in the back.
In a way, Epic Games confirmed Apple's suspicions. On mobile platforms, the price reduction is made possible by a newly implemented payment system that allows v-buck buyers to forgo transactions through the App Store, and can instead purchase directly from 'Epic for the reduced price. So, if players decide to stick with sending payments to Apple, they won't have the luxury of taking advantage of that 20% discount.
"If Apple and Google reduce their fees on Payments, Epic will pass the savings on to [all] players," said an ultimatum from the developer, following the announcement. Hours later, Apple made it clear that it was unwilling to negotiate and removed the battle royale for "violating App Store guidelines".
It's sort of an unforeseen hostage scenario. Because Apple couldn't qualify for the exclusive discount, they found no purpose for the game to be on the platform. “We will do everything we can to work with Epic to resolve these violations so they can return Fortnite to the App Store,” the mega-corporation told TheVerge. In other words, Apple isn't afraid to paint Epic Games in a negative light, until they receive a profit from Epic's biggest title.
The tension is unlikely to end anytime soon. This is mainly because Epic suffered a significant loss, should the 20% discount and 30% App Store fee be implemented. Some games have seen fit to avoid this fee by setting up their own store on iOS, but this usually leads to a number of issues – with some players having to jailbreak their devices to access it. So far neither party has made a decision on when and if Fortnite will return to the App Store.
