Epic Games spent over $100 million fighting Apple’s App Store rules but says it was worth the cost

Apple vs Epic Games

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has revealed that the company has spent more than $100 million in legal fees alone fighting Apple in their long-running dispute over App Store rules. And if you add in lost revenue, Sweeney says the total cost could be over a billion dollars.

In an interview with Business Insider, Sweeney shared that while the legal expenses were massive, the bigger hit came from lost earnings. Fortnite, Epic’s most popular game, made about $300 million on iOS during the two years it was available. After Apple removed it from the App Store, Epic lost out on potentially hundreds of millions more.

“You could easily imagine the total cost being over a billion,” Sweeney said, noting that Fortnite’s player base suffered because iOS users could no longer join the game.

The legal fight began when Epic tried to sidestep Apple’s 30% commission by directing users to make payments outside the App Store. In response, Apple banned Fortnite from iOS. The courtroom battle that followed didn't go entirely in Epic’s favor—Apple wasn’t found to have a monopoly—but one big change did come from it.

In 2024, Apple was forced to change its App Store policies to allow developers to link users to external websites for payments. This was a major shift, and just last week, a judge ruled that Apple hadn’t followed the court’s order properly and held the company in contempt of court. Apple must now allow these links without charging commissions or controlling how the links look.

It’s a big win for developers and a win funded by Epic Games.

Thanks to the new rules, Fortnite will return to the US App Store later this week. Since Apple had banned Epic’s U.S. developer account, the company will use its Swedish account to relaunch the game. Sweeney says Apple has been informed, and he’d be “very surprised” if the tech giant tried to block it again.

Epic also has bigger plans in store. Later this year, it will launch Epic Games Store Webshops, allowing developers to host their own digital storefronts. For smaller developers, these Webshops will be free; larger ones will pay just a 12% fee, significantly less than Apple’s usual cut.