Billion-dollar grudge match reignites as Epic demands Fortnite’s return to the U.S. App Store
The battle royale between Epic Games and Apple just hit another high-stakes checkpoint. In a fresh court filing, Epic asks Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers to compel Apple to allow Fortnite back into the U.S. App Store, claiming the iPhone giant is violating a standing injunction and deliberately sidelining the game for daring to challenge Cupertino’s gatekeeping.
“Apple is punishing us,” Epic says, “and sending a clear message to all developers: Defy us, and we’ll shut your app down.”
This comes just weeks after Epic won a major ruling that Apple was in “willful violation” of a court order prohibiting anti-competitive behavior—one that should have allowed devs to sidestep Apple’s infamous 30% cut by directing users to third-party payment systems.
Instead, Epic says Apple is stonewalling, refusing to act on a Fortnite submission to the U.S. storefront while it pursues an appeal of the ruling. The result? Fortnite on iOS is offline worldwide, as Epic claims Apple also blocked the game from launching via the Epic Games Store in Europe.
Apple denies the global shutdown narrative, saying it merely asked Epic Sweden to remove the U.S. store reference from its submission so European markets wouldn’t be impacted.
But Epic isn’t buying it.
“Apple is trying to circumvent the injunction and reassert control over the very market it was ordered to open,” Epic wrote in its motion. The company is now asking the court to enforce the injunction again, hold Apple in civil contempt, and force it to accept “any compliant version of Fortnite” immediately.
The irony is rich: Epic is now fighting to benefit from the very pro-competition reforms it helped trigger in court—while the game that started it all remains banned from the U.S. App Store.
The case, once framed as a crusade against App Store tyranny, now reads like a $100-billion cold war, with Fortnite as the nuclear football and every dev watching nervously from the sidelines.
