Just last week, Fortnite game publisher Epic Games re-submitted the popular battle royale game to Apple’s App Store following a U.S.-based judge’s ruling that Apple could not charge 15-30% commission fees on in-app purchases made from apps and that app makers could use their own payment systems outside of the App Store’s.
While Epic Games’ United States-based developer account remains banned from the App Store, the company took advantage of the judge’s ruling to re-submit Fortnite to the United States-based App Store under a Swedish developer account that Epic Games operates under within the European Union. Since then, it’s been crickets from Apple…
But there’s been a new development this week, as according to Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, a weekly Fortnite update with new content is launching on Friday that requires an app update to be rolled out on all systems simultaneously, which meant that Epic Games was forced to pull the original submission and re-submit a newer version of the Fortnite app to Apple’s App Store this week.
Even since that re-submission, which occurred on Wednesday, Epic Games still hasn’t heard back from Apple. The Fortnite app has neither been accepted or rejected by the App Store team, so it remains to be seen what action Apple will ultimately take.
It’s worth noting that Apple doesn’t typically take this long to review and approve apps submitted to the App Store, assuming those apps conform with the App Store’s guidelines. With that in mind, it appears as if Apple could be purposely dragging its feet, thinking about ways to delay or hinder the app’s acceptance.
For those who are waiting for Fortnite to return to the iOS & iPadOS App Store, the journey’s outcome remains uncertain. The best we can do is continue to wait and see what happens, as we’re sure Sweeney will talk more about what happens in broad view of the public via his 𝕏 social media account as he generally does.
Are you eagerly awaiting Fortnite back in the App Store, or have you accepted its disappearance and moved on to alternative sideloading methods instead? Let us know in the comments section down below.