Apple just got slammed in court for anticompetitive behaviour, and Fortnite is heading home
Big news on the gaming front: Fortnite is officially heading back to the iOS App Store — and Apple’s grip on App Store payments just took a major hit in court.
Late Wednesday night, U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled that Apple can no longer charge developers a fee for purchases made outside of their apps.
The decision (which you can check out here) comes after Apple quietly imposed a 27% commission on third-party transactions — a move the judge says was in direct violation of a 2021 court order.
Now, Apple is being called out for “willful” noncompliance and could even face criminal contempt proceedings.
“Apple willfully chose not to comply with this Court’s Injunction,” Gonzalez Rogers wrote. “That it thought this Court would tolerate such insubordination was a gross miscalculation. As always, the cover-up made it worse. For this Court, there is no second bite at the apple.”
Epic Games — which famously kicked off the legal battle in 2020 — wasted no time celebrating.
CEO Tim Sweeney posted on X that Fortnite will return to the U.S. App Store next week, marking the end of a nearly five-year absence.
If Apple drops the third-party fee globally, he added, Epic will go further: ending current and future litigation and restoring Fortnite worldwide.
We will return Fortnite to the US iOS App Store next week.
Epic puts forth a peace proposal: If Apple extends the court’s friction-free, Apple-tax-free framework worldwide, we’ll return Fortnite to the App Store worldwide and drop current and future litigation on the topic. https://t.co/bIRTePm0Tv
— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) April 30, 2025
But before players get too excited, there’s still a final hurdle. Apple has to approve the app — and there’s no guarantee it will. “Apple could arbitrarily reject Epic from the App Store despite us following all of the rules,” Sweeney said. “But, you know, they would have to deal with various consequences of that.”
For Fortnite fans, Epic’s even teasing a reward if peace is reached: a new in-game outfit called the Pine Patron, a sequel to 2020’s Tart Tycoon — a deadpan jab at Apple in the form of a suit-wearing apple-headed character.
Apple, meanwhile, isn’t backing down quietly. The company told The Verge it “strongly disagrees” with the ruling, but will comply while appealing.
That means, effective immediately, Apple can’t impose third-party fees, block external payment links, or deploy pop-up scare screens warning users about leaving the app.
How We Got Here: A Quick Recap
This latest ruling is the climax of a legal saga that’s been brewing since 2020. Here’s a refresher:
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2020: Epic Games tried to bypass Apple’s 30% App Store commission by slipping a direct payment system into Fortnite. Apple booted the game from the App Store, and Epic filed a lawsuit. Things got spicy fast, with Epic mocking Apple in a parody of its own “1984” ad and launching a campaign around the “Free Fortnite” movement.
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2021: Judge Gonzalez Rogers issued a permanent injunction forbidding Apple from blocking developers who linked to third-party payment systems. She stopped short of calling Apple a monopoly but made it clear the company needed to loosen its App Store rules.
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2022–2023: In what many saw as a workaround, Apple began allowing links to external payments — but slapped developers with a 27% “service fee” if users made a purchase that way. Epic called it “compliance theatre.”
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2024: While the appeals continued in the U.S., Apple faced mounting pressure in Europe under the Digital Markets Act, which forced the company to allow third-party app stores and payment systems. Global momentum was shifting.
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2025: The hammer dropped this week, with Gonzalez Rogers ruling that Apple had not only violated the court’s previous order but also lied about it. One Apple executive was accused of “outright lying under oath,” and criminal contempt proceedings could follow.
As for Fortnite — one of the most lucrative and culturally significant games of the last decade — its U.S. App Store return is imminent. Its global comeback, however, rests on whether Apple decides to play nice.
