Last year, Epic Games made headlines announcing that they were suing Apple following the removal of Fortnite on the App stores. The tension grew throughout the year with Apple’s response to the filed lawsuit, #FreeFortnite tournament with Anti-Apple themed prizes, Apple seeking damages from Epic Games. Later in the year, Epic Games was denied the preliminary injunction against Apple. Now, the trial has officially begun. Both parties have read their opening statements and some new details regarding Epic Games and Fortnite have been revealed.
Financial documents disclosed during the trial revealed that Fortnite made $9 billion over 2018 and 2019. It also shared how much money Epic paid to various platform partners between January 2017 and October 2020. This was an effort by Apple to show that Fortnite was not the biggest platform on iOS. $237 million was paid to Apple, $246 million to Microsoft, and $451 million to Sony. Speaking of Sony and PlayStation, pre-trial court documents revealed that PlayStation 4 was the biggest driver of Fortnite revenues from March 2018 through July 2020. Xbox One was second during this period. iOS devices accounted for 7% of total Fortnite revenue during this time. Also disclosed was a series of emails from 2018 that were all about Epic Games trying to get Sony to allow Cross-Play. Epic presented ideas like unique characters for PS Plus subscribers and talked about how the partnership would “make Sony look like heroes.” Sony rejected the ideas because they weren’t sure that they showed cross-play would be good for PlayStation.
Documents also may have revealed what new skins could be coming to the game soon. These possible additions include Nintendo’s Samus Aran, musicians Ariana Grande and Lady Gaga, and actor Dwyane Johnson aka The Rock.
The trial will last for three weeks and can be followed along as California District Court is hosting the trial as a public webcast. You can find the Zoom link on the US District Court page.