#FreeFortnite A Year Later; What Has Happened?

Twelve months on from the shambolic, disgusting, and dangerous PR campaign aimed at children that begun last year, what has come of the Epic Vs. Apple lawsuit? At the time of writing, a lot of dirty laundry has been aired and a large amount of chest-puffing has gone on in each direction. We’re still awaiting judge Yvonne Gonzales Rogers to make her assessment of the case, which she noted will make very little difference as litigation will be contested. “I know that I’m just a stepping stone for all of you,” Rogers said when both parties requested a bench trial last October, before continuing, “Whoever loses is going to take it up and say everything I did was wrong — that’s what litigators do.“

However, Friday the anniversary came of the PR campaign and subsequent removal of the free-to-play battle royale from the stores of not only Apple, but also Google Play. Lawsuits also go the world over, not just in America, as an Australian court ruled that Apple’s stay was granted unfairly by justice Nye Perram this July. The courts that have been rather quiet in comparison have been those in Europe, which has seen the least amount of news breaking out of the courtroom and onto Twitter, Eurogamer, PC Gamer, and others.

The phrase “#FreeFortnite” is the type of ridiculously absurd naming that I thought we left after Medal of Honor tried to pass off Warfighter as something to be taken seriously. Nonetheless, it spread and continues to be used a year following, as the “little guy” Epic is being harassed by the corporate big shot, Apple. In honesty, as I stated when this began, it is a corporate slap-fight that is used to propagate what each desires in the business world. Apple (and Google) wants to keep a stranglehold on the power it already has, Epic wants to push into the market over which Apple and Google are dominant.

“It is the principle” some will state in their desire to defend and “free” the game from Apple’s “tyranny.” It’s not, we know full-well as Epic Games boss, Tim Sweeney, when asked if he’d take a special deal for Epic alone on this 30% cut for Apple, he said, “Yes, I would have.” It might be a principle, but not one that is shared by those who are actually in the courtroom challenging it, just those in the online courtroom. That’s who are concerned with actually playing cannon fodder in this pretend-war of words by two-billion-dollar corporations trying to eke out their share of something.

So, in the year since the video propaganda, the game’s removal from stores, and the following lawsuits across three continents, nothing has come of it. Nothing has come of it that we didn’t know would happen before the litigation began, as fans defend it under the assumptions set out by Epic. I don’t disagree, Apple and Google hold power and request more money than it is worth, but all the same, what does Epic Games stand to gain from it? A possible third-party store, which Apple wants to avoid under the pretense of security.

Others argue that a lot more people own an iOS device (ignoring Google’s Android system entirely) than those with a PC, Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One, PS5, or Xbox Series X/S, and thus play on that platform more. I won’t discount this argument, in part because places such as India or other parts of the world characterized as poor may well have a considerable number of iOS players over others. However, over the past few years, iOS sales have been dropping from their lofty heights of 2015. Meanwhile, the mobile market share of the world has been over 50% in favor of Android since mid-2014. Even at its height, Apple hardly controls more than 27% of that market share overall. This makes that argument one that doesn’t add up to the full picture.

However, through those stats, you also have to extrapolate further data such as mobile gaming markets and those that have played Fortnite. This drops the number of players from the 200-million sales Apple and Samsung see individually each year to somewhere around 100-million possible players. Which, if you count the sales of all Xbox Ones and Series X/S’, PS4s and 5s, the Nintendo Switch, and PC users, it is a market share that is substantially more diminutive. Across all systems until May of last year, the game had 350-million players, but only 80-million users a month across all platforms as of last June.

Ultimately, what has come from a year of the prolonged case of corporations playing a slap-fight in public has been a public mostly made up for young teens and very young adults, entrusted with PR taglines and nothing more. A pantomime in which the public has played their part in the whole show by turning to Twitter and continuing the #FreeFortnite marketing on the part of Epic. They’ve been playing the game of “Chinese whispers,” or “Telephone” and every time, the details getting more and more distorted by the time it gets back to the source. To which details, such as Sweeney’s own admission of being ok with a special deal, are ignored.