Epic vs. Apple – A right Battle Royale pt. V.

A workaround that goes nowhere.

• The idea that Fortnite will be able to return to the iPhone through GeForce Now is technically possible but the experience is unlikely to be good enough such that anyone will want to use it.
• GeForce Now is NVIDIA’s game streaming service which allows games to be installed on a remote virtual computer and then played remotely.
• Fortnite has been available on this service for some time and now there is a possibility that should NVIDIA succeed on getting its client approved for iOS that Fortnite would be back on iPhone.
• GeForce Now has been available for some time on Android and while its performance has been reasonably good, it has yet to gain any real traction.
• To make matters worse a whole host of developers have abandoned the platform meaning that the stable of games is now a shadow of its former self (see here).
• The reasons for this have not been made clear, but I suspect that, as usual, it comes down to money.
• By making a game that a user has purchased on a PC playable on a smartphone, the service may have prevented the sale of a smartphone version of the game, thereby depriving the developer of revenue.
• By contrast, Epic Games has been a big supporter of the platform because it has nothing to lose from a single instance of Fortnite being available on any device.
• This is because Fortnite is free to play but offers in-game purchases making the number of copies downloaded or purchased irrelevant.
• However, I suspect that GeForce Now will never make it onto iOS because it competes with Apple Games and Apple would undoubtedly view GeForce Now as a competing app store which it does not allow.
• Even if GeForce Now were to make onto iOS, it is unlikely to offer Fortnite any relief from the losses it is now suffering by not being on iOS.
• This is because Fortnite is a game where latency and performance are critical to the user experience and can have a significant impact on how well the player can compete.
• NVIDIA implicitly admits to this issue by recommending the users only use 5Ghz WiFi meaning that one needs to sit right next to the router or be plugged in via Ethernet in order to get optimal performance.
• Consequently, I suspect that should users be able to play Fortnite on iPhone via GeForce Now, they will find that their performance is not as good as when they are playing on the native app.
• Hence, this workaround, even it makes it onto the new iPhone is unlikely to offer Epic Games any relief from the current situation (see here).
• This will soon become more acute because with a new iPhone being available, users who love Fortnite will have to hang onto their old iPhones for longer in order to play the game that they downloaded prior to Fortnite being kicked off the App Store.
• For lovers of both iPhones and Fortnite, this will prove to be a critical test as there is no way to get Fortnite onto an iPhone 12 short of a jailbreak.
• At the end of the day, I think that only the lawyers will end up winning but it will make a great spectator sport.
• I still think that Epic and Apple will reach a settlement of some kind where Epic gets some degree of special treatment along the lines of Amazon Prime.
• This story is going to run and run.