Apple responds following Fortnite’s removal from App Store

Fortnite has been blocked on the App Store for the foreseeable future after its second attempt to bring the game to mobile on iOS.

Back in August 2020, Fortnite removed itself from the iOS App Store after taking a stand against the company’s commission on in-game purchases. After five years and a pretty intense court battle, which ruled in Fortnite’s favor, Epic Games has tried to get it back onto the App Store.

On May 9, Fortnite was sent to Apple for review. However, nearly a week later and after 120 hours, they were forced to pull the game and resubmit so they could roll out May 16’s Fortnite v35.10 update. In that attempt, on May 16, Fortnite revealed that the resubmission had been blocked, taking less than a day to process.

Fortnite won’t be coming to the App Store

In a post on X, the Fortnite account revealed that “Apple has blocked our Fortnite submission so we cannot release to the US 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.”

As such, it looks like Fortnite won’t be available on the App Store or Epic Games Store on Apple mobiles in the US and the European Union for the foreseeable future.

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Later on in the day, Apple responded to the block on X, explaining that they “asked that Epic Sweden resubmit the app update without including the US storefront of the App Store so as not to impact Fortnite in other geographies. We did not take any action to remove the live version of Fortnite from alternative distribution marketplaces in the EC.”

As such, it seems that Apple is explaining that this is a storefront issue rather than anything to do with the previous lawsuit.

It remains to be seen whether Fortnite will be reinstated on the App Store anytime soon.