Fortnite Returning to iPhones After Four-Year Long Legal Battle

The four-year-long saga detailing Epic Games’ battle against Apple over in-app purchases is close to reaching its drawn-out climax. Epic plans to deploy its games, including the monstrously popular Fortnite, on third-party app marketplace AltStore, not just on its own still-incoming Epic Games Store. It’s good news for iOS users (at least in the EU) but bad news for Samsung fans since you’ll no longer find Fortnite or any other of Epic’s mobile titles on the Galaxy Store.

In January, Apple opened a crack in its infamous walled garden to comply with the European Union’s Digital Markets Act. This allowed for third-party app stores on iOS for the first time in the iPhone’s 17-year history. After that news dropped, Epic declared Fortnite would return to iOS “through the Epic Games Store.” The company said it’s leaving some app stores “that serve as rent collectors without competing robustly and serving all developers fairly.”

According to Epic, the company is extricating itself from Samsung’s Galaxy store. Epic CEO Tim Sweeney said this is because Samsung blocks sideloading by default. Epic sued Google, calling the Play Store anti-competitive. The company claimed in its post that Google has proposed to Samsung “to restrain competition in the market for Android app distribution.” Fortnite is currently not on the Google Play Store either.

As detailed in a report this week by Android Authority, new Samsung devices with One UI 6.1.1 block sideloading by default. Of course, you can re-enable it through settings, though most users wouldn’t know when or where to do it. 

In its Thursday blog post, Epic said its game marketplace “will be coming to Android worldwide and iOS in the European Union,” though it did not give a specific date. The company declared that Fortnite and Epic’s other mobile games would end up on third-party iOS app stores, specifically AltStore, for iPhone users in the EU. Those games are coming to two other third-party app shops “soon,” the company said.

In March, Apple axed Epic’s developer account, citing that Epic was “verifiably untrustworthy” about its contractual agreements according to a letter sent to the games publisher. Epic made that letter public, and CEO Tim Sweeney claimed they lost their access over his anti-Apple tweets. Apple told Gizmodo the matter was due to “Epic’s egregious breach of its contractual obligations.” Two days later, Apple reinstated Epic’s developer account in the EU.

“We’ve long been advocating for the rights of stores to exist and compete fairly on iOS and Android, and progress is spreading across the globe, in the form of Europe’s DMA, similar laws in the UK and Japan, regulatory investigations around the world, and victory in the Epic v Google litigation in the US.

Epic cites itself as having a better deal for developers. The company takes a 12% cut for all payments on the platform. The company explained that with these sideloaded game shops, there would be no extra cost due to third-party app store fees. In comparison, the biggest game marketplace on PC, Valve’s Steam platform, typically takes a 30% cut of game revenue. 

The EU will be the first to get the Epic Games Store on iOS and Android later this year. The games shop will be on iOS in the UK in the second half of 2025.

As a reminder, you don’t necessarily need the Fortnite app to play the game on iPhone or Android. You could stream it through Xbox Cloud Gaming or other services like Amazon Luna if you trust your internet speeds to handle both streaming and your in-game latency. 

Are Epic and Big Daddy Sweeney right to be angry? Yes, though only in terms of a company being restricted by notoriously high-walled gardens on both Android and iOS. But all this infighting hits consumers the hardest. A new player likely won’t know where to go actually to play Fortnite or any other Epic mobile game. Until Epic finally releases its app store on both ecosystems, plenty of players will be stuck sweating in their banana outfits, scratching their heads.