Tim Sweeney: Epic Games lost $1 billion due to the removal of Fortnite from the App Store and Google Play
In August 2020, Apple and Google removed Fortnite from their mobile app stores. Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney told Game File journalist Stephen Totilo in an interview that over the years of the game's absence from the stores, his company lost about $1 billion in potential revenue from Fortnite.
Fortnite
Nevertheless, Sweeney believes it was worth it.
“It’s a small price to pay for the future freedom of our company and everyone else who wants to operate in the mobile market,” he said.
To remind, Fortnite was removed from the App Store and Google Play after Epic Games enabled players to pay for content directly to them, bypassing Apple and Google’s payment systems. This was followed by legal battles in which Epic Games sought to label both corporations as monopolists in the mobile app store market. In the case of Google, they succeeded, but in the case of Apple — not.
In his conversation with Totilo, Sweeney added that Epic Games spent “hundreds of millions of dollars” fighting Apple and Google.
