If you sit down to play a game of Fortnite on your iPhone or iPad you’re probably good to go, for now. But you’ll hit a roadblock if you try and spend any V-Bucks because, well, you can’t.
With Apple and Epic Games still in the middle of their never-ending spat over App Store fees, the version of Fortnite that people have installed on their iPhones and iPads is now so old that it’s out of lockstep with all of the other platforms. And as a result, Epic’s cutting it off.
The news was confirmed last week but as of today, 30 January 2023, nobody can spend V-Bucks if they play on Apple’s mobile devices. And if they installed Fortnite from the Google Play Store, for that matter.
“Beginning January 30, Fortnite players using the August 2020 13.40 app build previously available on iOS, Mac, and Google Play can no longer spend V-Bucks and must be over 18 to play,” the Fortnite Status account shared on Twitter.
The tweets continued, saying that “we want all versions of our games to use the current suite of Epic Online Services including parental controls, purchasing defaults, and parental verification features.” And then the kicker - “we are not able to update the app on these platforms given Apple and Google’s restrictions on Fortnite.”
Epic Games famously took umbrage with the way that both Apple and Google take a cut of any purchase made via their stores. Epic bypassed Apple’s rules by stealth-launching a version of Fortnite that used its own in-app payment systems and Apple responded by kicking the app out of the App Store. It hasn’t been back since.
Now that app is so old that it simply isn’t supported by Epic, leaving gamers a bit stuck. Still, there are ways and means to play Fortnite on your phone for free, so long as you have a decent internet connection.
