Quick Summary
The EU Digital Markets Act will Epic Games to reinstate Fortnite on iPhones – although only in the European Union at present.
It will also launch its own app store on iOS, it seems.
Making good on promises it's been making for a while, Epic has confirmed again that it's going to be making a loud and proud return to iOS in the near future.
We already knew straight from the horse's mouth that the massive publisher (and Fornite maker) would be coming back to the platform, but a new update suggests that it'll be sooner rather than later.
In a blog post reviewing Epic Games Store stats for 2023, there's mention of the fact that Apple has reinstated Epic's iOS developer account in the EU.
This opens the way for the studio to realise its plans to both bring back a direct app download for Fortnite, and to bring its gaming storefront to the platform as its own app, too.
All of this has been prompted by the EU bringing into force its new Digital Markets Act, a set of laws that have had a direct bearing on the extremely tempestuous relationship between Apple and Epic. That hinged on the fees that Apple charges developers each time a purchase or download is made through its platform.
Apple now has to allow third-party storefronts on iOS, as a result of the Act, and Epic is swooping to take advantage after years of being effectively banned from the App Store.
All of this is true for people in the EU, anyway – the two companies aren't tangled in lawsuits over in this jurisdiction, compared to a much messier state of affairs in the US, and with the UK's lack of EU membership, it is likely to be excluded too.
This means that there should be an iOS Fortnite app pretty soon for EU citizens, although we don't have any sort of an actual timeline from Epic yet.
In the US, Apple and Epic have both been appealing sections of various rulings in lawsuits between them, disputing wording and some conclusions, although so far nothing has been amended or rewritten.
Whether the two companies can actually cool down and start operating a little bit more normally together will remain to be seen. While that goes on behind the scenes, the upshot is that the Epic Games Store and Fortnite could get a decent chunk easier to find on an iPhone in the very near future.
