In addition to its Xbox drama, Apple has also been busy wrestling with Fortnite creator Epic Games. Epic has expressed frustration with the tech giant over its 30% fee on all sales made through the App Store, which includes all games and in-app DLC purchases. Fortunately, Epic recently announced a permanent 20% discount on all Fortnite v-buck purchases on consoles, PCs, and, yes, mobile. Although fans found their wallets released, Apple saw it as a stab in the back.
In a way, Epic Games confirmed Apple's suspicions. On mobile platforms, the price reduction is made possible by a newly implemented payment system that allows v-buck buyers to forgo transactions through the App Store, and can instead buy directly from the app store. 'Epic for the reduced price. So if gamers decide to stick with sending payments to Apple, they won't have the luxury of taking advantage of that 20% discount.
“If Apple and Google reduce their fees on payments, Epic will pass the savings on to [all] players,” the developer's ultimatum said following the announcement. Hours later, Apple made it clear that it was unwilling to negotiate and deleted the battle royale for "violating App Store guidelines."
It's sort of an unforeseen hostage scenario. Because Apple couldn't take advantage of the exclusive discount, they saw no purpose in the game being on the platform. "We will do everything possible to work with Epic to resolve these violations so that they can return Fortnite to the App Store," the mega-company told TheVerge. In other words, Apple isn't afraid to paint Epic Games in a negative light, until they receive a profit from Epic's biggest title.
The tension is unlikely to stop anytime soon. This is mainly due to the fact that Epic suffered a significant loss, if the 20% reduction and 30% App Store fee were implemented. Some games have seen fit to avoid this fee by setting up their own store on iOS, but that usually results in a number of issues - with some players having to jailbreak their devices to access them. So far, neither party has made a decision on when and if Fortnite will return to the App Store.
