Apple Pocketed At Least $100M in ‘Fortnite’ Commissions

Apple generated at least $100 million in revenue during the 30-month run of “Fortnite” on the App Store, according to an Apple executive’s testimony on Wednesday. 

The testimony was the latest bombshell during the Epic Games v. Apple trial, now in its third week. The legal battle stems from Apple’s decision to remove “Fortnite” from the App Store in 2020 after Epic figured out how to circumvent Apple’s 30% commission fee.

The $100 million figure was confirmed by Michael Schmid — Apple’s head of business development for App Store games — during a line of questioning on the witness stand.

However, Schmid did not specify the exact amount that Apple made from “Fortnite” and said it would be “inappropriate” to disclose if his employer made more than $200 million off the game. 

Data firm Sensor Tower said last year that App Store users spent nearly $1.2 billion on “Fortnite,” generating roughly $354 million in revenue for Apple. 

This latest revelation adds to the list of industry secrets revealed since the trial started:

• Sony makes Epic pay up for the cross-platform availability of “Fortnite.”  
• Epic’s digital store isn’t profitable, with losses expected to reach $719 million by 2027.
• Xbox executive Lori Wright said that Microsoft has never turned a profit on hardware sales from its Xbox consoles when she testified as a witness for Epic.

Apple brought in $275 billion in revenue during its fiscal 2020, and most recently reported $89.6 billion in revenue for fiscal Q2 2021. Epic has a valuation of $28.7 billion as of April.