An interesting development is happening on the front of the Epic vs Apple legal battle that began last year. In a Tweet from the @FortniteGame handle, it has been confirmed that Epic, creator of Fortnite, has asked Apple to reinstate its developer account for the game – but only in South Korea.
Epic has asked Apple to restore our Fortnite developer account. Epic intends to re-release Fortnite on iOS in Korea offering both Epic payment and Apple payment side-by-side in compliance with the new Korean law.— Fortnite (@FortniteGame) September 9, 2021
The request comes soon after new law has gone into effect in Korea that would require Apple to allow both App Store payments and Epic’s payment systems to exist side-by-side. This means that Apple would no longer be able to force developers to use Apple’s payment system, which is a requirement to be listed on the App Store. The law passed over a week ago and it certainly does not work in favor of Apple and Google.
Fortnite Season 7 – Chapter 2
To quickly recap, Epic tried to sue both Apple and Google in the US due to disagreements with the way that both app stores collected revenue fees for using their payment systems. Epic Games wanted to use its own system and believed that players should be allowed to choose which system they wanted to use.
Neither company was on board, and after several lawsuits and court hearings, both delisted Fortnite from their app stores. Since then, it hasn’t been possible to play new seasons of Fortnite on iOS devices. The story was different with Android since users can just sideload the Epic Games launcher thanks to the open-source nature of the OS.
Via