After a five-year antitrust legal battle, the war between Epic Games and mobile platform giants Google and Apple appears to be coming to an end. Epic Games recently announced that its popular battle royale game, Fortnite, has officially returned to the Google Play Store in the United States. Meanwhile, the lawsuit involving Apple has also seen new developments. Although the court largely upheld the ruling of contempt of court by Apple, it also gave Apple a crucial victory: allowing it to charge commissions on transactions that lead to third-party payments.
Did Apple lose face but win substance?
In the battle between Apple and Epic Games, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued its latest ruling today.
Overall, Apple lost most of the appeals, with the court upholding its previous contempt of court ruling that Apple violated the injunction (anti-steering, i.e., prohibiting users from using external payments). However, there was a crucial victory for Apple in this ruling: the judge overturned the previous order prohibiting Apple from charging commissions on external payments.
This means that even if Apple is required to allow developers to provide links within apps and direct users to external websites to make payments, Apple still has the right to charge a commission on these transactions (currently set at 27%).
This is a blow to Epic Games, as one of the core purposes of their lawsuit was to circumvent Apple's exorbitant platform commission fees (commonly known as the "Apple tax"). The court ruling now effectively confirms that Apple, even without handling platform payments, still has the right to charge based on its intellectual property rights and platform maintenance costs.
So many reasons to drop in this month… and now we're on Google Play in the US too!
Android: https://t.co/Z6pkYqYsRI
iPhone: https://t.co/JNpTVneGMN
PC: https://t.co/CPsjp3XNdo pic.twitter.com/TV9b1ZlqfJ— Fortnite (@Fortnite) December 11, 2025
Fortnite returns to Android platform after settling with Google.
Compared to the protracted lawsuit with Apple, the battle between Epic Games and Google has intensified.Last month's settlement agreementcalm.
Both parties agreed to a revised order from U.S. District Judge James Donato regarding Google Play Store fees and third-party billing systems. With the agreement in effect, Fortnite has finally been relisted on the Google Play Store in the United States after a hiatus of many years.
With Fortnite's return to the iOS platform in the US this spring (via third-party stores or websites), the game is now available on almost all major gaming platforms, ending its "wandering" period since being removed from the platform in 2020 for challenging its payment policies.
Analysis: The high wall has cracks, but it has not collapsed.
Looking back on the five-year legal battle, Epic Games successfully forced Apple and Google to make concessions on many policies (such as opening up third-party app stores and allowing external links to be added within apps), but it did not completely overturn the "walled garden" business model.
The ruling that allows Apple to charge for external payments sets a new precedent: the value of platform providers lies not only in processing payments, but also in user acquisition and ecosystem maintenance. This also suggests that even if developers can bypass platform payment transactions in the future, they may still find it difficult to completely escape the fate of paying "tolls" to the platform.
