Bad News for Fortnite Mobile Players, the Game Is Gone Till 2021

Players of Fortnite on iOS have bad news coming there way. In the recent ruling given by the United States district court, it has now been confirmed that Fortnite will be off iOS till May 2021 at the very least. Judge Yvonne Gonzales Rogers of the Northern District of California pushed out new rulings on October 9 which effectively said that Apple can keep Fortnite out of iOS but any game that is using the Unreal Engine will continue to stay on the iOS app store. In conclusion, PUBG Mobile is safe and Fortnite is not.

Coming back to the date of May 2021, it is not actually confirmed if Fortnite will be back on iOS on that date. On the contrary, despite what others are telling you the game is effectively gone and dead on the iOS platform. That May 2021 date is when the trail will start again in the courts. Safe to say, if you are a fan of Fortnite and were using your iPhone or iPad to play the game, now would be a good time to switch to consoles and PC to play the upcoming seasons of the game.

For those who have already forgotten what the drama was all about, here is a recap. Apple has a set of policies for allowing apps and games on the iOS platform. Now bear in mind that these policies are not up for either negotiation or debate as far as Apple is concerned. In one of those policies, Apple states that any game that is on iOS and has microtransactions in them has to use Apple's own platform as the payment mediator and have to pay a small fee to Apple for the transactions. So far so good. Apple according to them does this to make iOS a safer platform for its users and many excluding Epic games agree.

So what happened? Well, Epic did not agree with the policies Apple had for the platform that they created that is running on the hardware that Apple has designed, engineered, and manufactured. So Epic games decided that what they need to do in order to show Apple that its policies are monopolistic is to bypass iOS as the payment mediator for in-app purchases and let players buy vbucks directly from Epic games at a discount. They did this while they were on iOS which basically meant that they violated the policies of the App Store.

No one at Apple appreciated the bold stance that Epic games were taking and they did not especially appreciate being called a monopoly. Truth be told, Epic Games also did the same with their Android version of Fortnite but since Android is still an open system people can still sideload the game from the Epic Games website. So Apple promptly removed Fortnite from their platform which made Epic Games file a lawsuit and here we are.

Maybe the funniest thing about this entire mess that Epic games had created is the statement they gave after this recent hearing. They said

“Epic Games is grateful that Apple will continue to be barred from retaliating against Unreal Engine,” the company said. While Epic is clearly relieved, the developers are still adamant about putting an end to “Apple’s anti-competitive behavior.”