Epic Games Says They Spent $1 Billion in Fight Against Apple & Google, “Small Price to Pay” for Freedom of Market

Back in 2020, Epic Games went into a messy battle with both Apple and Google regarding Fortnite, and the two mobile makers’ policies, which translated to the game being pulled from both the App Store and Play Store. Not only did Epic Games lose a ton of money by not having Fortnite on mobile devices, but there’s also the legal fees involved and other stuff as well.

In an interview, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney revealed that Epic has spent about $1 billion in its fight against the two monolithic mobile companies. However, Sweeney deems this money well spent, and is a “small price” to pay for the future of the company, for all developers and gaming in general.

I guess as a matter of public record, you could see that we’ve spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the battle in the combination of legal fees. You saw Apple sent us a $74 million bill for their legal fees. [laughs] We had legal fees, too. [Note: Apple’s bill was for $73.4 million, to be precise.]

And, there’s a lost revenue component associated with Apple blocking Fortnite from the iOS App Store for these last four years. It’s hard to say what that would be, because it’s talking about what this alternative reality scenario would be. But it might well be a billion dollars of lost revenue in four years of Fortnite being off the iOS App Store.

But we see the brightest days for Epic and the game industry as a whole, as coming in the future.

And there’s really no price that isn’t worth paying for freedom, for all developers and the future of gaming.

Apple literally collects tens of millions of dollars of these junk fees, as a result of not allowing competing stores and payment processors on iOS.

And if we spent a billion dollars so far, that’s a small price to pay for the future freedom of our company and of all of the others who want to participate in the market.

Fortnite is returning to Android mobile devices with the release of the Epic Games Store on mobile, though for iOS devices, it’s only coming to EU for now.

[Source: Game File (subscription required)

Stay connected to MP1st and the latest news by following us on Bluesky, X, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, and Google News.