Battle royale behemoth Fortnite had accumulated around 2.4 million downloads on iOS in the 30 days leading up to its removal from the App Store.
Furthermore, – according to data from Sensor Tower – in those 30 days, Epic Games’ title had generated $43.4 million via consumer spending on the iOS storefront worldwide. On top of that, just through Apple’s App Store alone, Fortnite hit 133.2 million installs and had generated $1.2 billion in revenue.
Meanwhile, in the short time that the battle royale was on Google Play – four months – it reached 11 million downloads and around $10 million through worldwide spending. Moreover, on the tech giant’s Android storefront alone, in the last 30 days, the game had attracted two million players and made $3.3 million via consumer spending.
Making enemies
Yesterday, Epic Games introduced a new payment method for its mobile players. This way would cut out Apple and Google, effectively preventing the companies from taking their 30 per cent commission for each sale. It was a move that clearly did not go down well with either party.
As a result, not only did Apple give Fortnite the boot from the App Store, but so did Google as it removed the battle royale from the Android storefront. It is worth noting that Epic has long had issues with the firms, particularly Google, as it reluctantly added its battle royale to Google Play in April.
However, the beef between these goliaths is far from over as Epic has decided to sue both Apple and Google. The American firm went so far as to claim that both are operating poor payment practices, essentially running an “unlawful monopoly”.
With a seismic battle on the horizon, we had to ask ourselves the question, why is Epic going to war with Apple and Google?.
