Tech Desk 
Aug 16, 2024
Fortnite, one of the most popular and favourite games of all time, is once again available on iOS in European Union (EU) and all across the globe on Android handsets, after a long haul of four years, Epic Games developer said on Friday.
Fortnite is a game developed by Epic and backed by China’s Tencent, which is substantially one of the biggest gaming studios. It was released back in 2017 and rose to prominence within a short time and captivated millions of devoted gamers from all over the world.
It accomplished plenty of achievements, but unfortunately in August 2020, the Cupertino-based tech giant and Alphabet-owned Google removed it from their respective app store due to violation of their particular guidelines.
Fortnite released a payment feature, causing multiple lawsuits to challenge their rules of charging approximately 30% commissions on those payments.
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It led to severe damage especially to Epic, because at that time, Epic had almost 116 million active users only on Apple. Currently, the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA) law has provided Epic with the approval for the release of its game store only in the bloc.
However, Apple is still rigid and seamlessly blocking users from accessing the game outside EU, leading to user’s disappointment outside Europe.
Epic Games Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Tim Sweeney stated, "We are grateful to the European Commission for not only passing the DMA and enabling store competition but also going in and robustly holding Apple and Google's feet to the fire to ensure that they can't just obstruct competition."
"They were going to great efforts to slow us down and tried to stop us several times, and the European Commission always stepped up and ensured that competitors were able to enter the market," Sweeney added.
Epic Games currently has almost 75 million monthly users and it aims to reach 100 million users by the last quarter of 2024. Moreover, it is seamlessly working with other developers to release the latest intriguing games through the store and continues to entertain users.
Additionally, users would be able to access these games through different mobile stores too including AltStore. However, it consists of an extended downloading procedure on the iPhone, with a sparse screen.
According to the Cupertino-based tech giant, the company has diligently worked to simplify the process of enabling the latest capability for developers all over Europe, while ensuring privacy.
Sweeney added, "We probably lost over a billion dollars of revenue by losing access to the iOS customer base globally for four years, but what's the cost of freedom?"
