Judge Orders Fortnite Back On iOS After Apple Exec Rages That "It's Our F****ING STORE"

Yahoo

23-05-2025

A five-year court battle between tech titans Apple and Epic Games may finally be coming to a close.
After months of explosive back-and-forth that went as high as the Supreme Court, Apple has reinstated Epic Games' landmark game, Fortnite, back onto its App Store.
Fortnite — a free-to-play game which makes money from gamers spending cash on flashy cosmetics — began prompting users to bypass Apple's iOS payment system and pay Epic directly back in August, 2020. The move helped Epic get around Apple's 30 percent fee, a flat tax it charged all developers for selling on the App Store.
Apple didn't like that, as Fortnite had over 116 million downloads through the App Store at the time. Apple argued Epic's payment portal violated the App Store's terms of service, and took the massively popular game off its platform.
In response, Epic filed suit against Apple on antitrust grounds, launching an admittedly corny "Free Fortnite" campaign, which nonetheless posed a serious question: does Apple have the right to restrict developers' access to the billions of devices that exclusively use the iOS App Store?
It's a question that took years to answer, and more twists and turns than a viral Fortnite dance. Apple countersued Epic, seeking damages from Epic's terms of service violation. In September 2021, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers issued a split decision, ruling with Apple on nine of ten counts, but awarding Epic a crucial injunction ordering Apple to allow apps to link to external payment platforms.
Notably, Gonzalez Rogers found that Apple wasn't a monopoly, but rather a duopoly alongside Google, which was engaged in a similar legal battle with Epic over the Google Play store. She likewise ordered Epic to pay Apple $3.6 million in damages.
Unhappy with the decision, both companies appealed, eventually escalating the issue to the Supreme Court, which declined to hear either appeal. Forced to allow developers to bypass Apple Pay, the company begrudgingly complied, but with on caveat. Apple now required developers to fork over 27 percent of the revenue made this way within 7 days of each transaction — a tactic known as malicious compliance.
That, of course, spawned another series of lawsuits in March 2024, as Epic vowed to continue the fight and prove that Apple was acting in bad faith.
Though Apple put on a cooperative face as the next phase kicked off, it would later emerge that the company's execs withheld documents, delayed proceedings, misled the court, and lied under oath.
On the final day of that trial, Epic introduced a series of messages between senior PR executives at Apple, showing the tech giant's frustration at having to follow the law.
"How is this still going," wrote Apple corporate communications worker Hannah Smith during an earlier day of trial.
"I have no idea. I am stunned," replied Marni Goldberg, Apple's director of public affairs, and former press secretary for Senator Joe Manchin. "It's our F****ING STORE," she roared in a message minutes later. "This is very much pissing me off."
Now knowing exactly who she was dealing with, Judge Gonzalez Rogers issued her scathing ruling on April 30, 2025, finding Apple "in willful violation" of the court's earlier decisions.
"In stark contrast to Apple's initial in-court testimony... documents reveal that Apple knew exactly what it was doing and at every turn chose the most anticompetitive option," Gonzalez Rogers wrote.
"To hide the truth, Vice-President of Finance, Alex Roman, outright lied under oath," the judge found. Though Roman testified that Apple decided on the 27 percent fee in January 2024 — a split-second decision made after the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal — other records prove the tech giant was plotting it as early as July 2023.
The ruling found that the decision to ignore the injunction went as high as Apple CEO Tim Cook, who ignored advice to follow the court's decision, and instead went with his "finance team," which convinced him to go through with the 27 percent fee. As Gonzalez Rogers wrote: "Cook chose poorly."
Somehow, that wasn't enough hot water. After the April 30 decision, Apple began quickly approving updates to apps linking to third-party payment platforms, according to antitrust journalist Matt Stoller. However, there was one exception: Epic's Fortnite, which Apple had "determined not to take action on the Fortnite app submission" until after all lingering legal appeals were done.
Presumably at her wit's end, Gonzalez Rogers issued a brutal one-page order, demanding Apple either make amends with Epic, or else sacrifice an Apple executive to the full wrath of the law.
"Obviously, Apple is fully capable of resolving this issue without further briefing or a hearing," the judge raged. "However, if the parties do not file a joint notice that this issue is resolved, and this Court's intervention is required, the Apple official who is personally responsible for ensuring compliance shall personally appear at the hearing."
Within a day of that final order, Apple folded, and has officially allowed Fortnite back on the app store (it's now estimated that the five year legal battle cost Apple $1 billion in lost revenue and legal fees.) Though the appeals battle still rages with Google, this one's a major win for software developers, publishers, and phone gamers everywhere.
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