Fortnite has pushed back its big Star Wars-themed mid-season update and, well, it probably has something to do with Apple.
It was originally meant to come out today, May 15, but has been pushed back a diabolical 24 hours to now release on May 16 instead. The most important thing here is that the update unlocks the General Grievous bonus track of the battle pass—something that’ll mean a lot more to Star Wars fans than it does to me, a woman who has only half-watched some of the movies.
Levels for the bonus pass have to be earned after it’s unlocked—no retroactively applied progression here, unfortunately—which gives everyone one less day to nab the rewards. It’s only an extra 14 levels to earn, but it’s still not fun having one less day to do it all.
Epic very helpfully does not give a reason for the delay. It put out an incredibly short tweet, sans bells and whistles or any actual explanation, but looking at Epic CEO Tim Sweeney’s recent posts it seems like Apple may have something to do with it.
If you didn’t know, Fortnite is set to return to the iOS App Store after a four-year absence. Except, er, the game’s been stuck in a bit of a review process limbo. Apple let Fortnite’s application hang in the air for over 100 hours—something which Fortnite news account ShiinaBR called “unusually long for an App Store review”.
The application was then pulled, which Tim Sweeney clarified was because of the new patch. “We need to release a weekly Fortnite update with new content this Friday, and all platforms must update simultaneously,” he posted. “So we have pulled the previous Fortnite version submitted to Apple App Review last Friday, and we have submitted a new version for review.”
I do have to wonder what’ll happen if Apple simply continues to ignore Fortnite’s application review, though. Will it push our cyborg lad even further back, or will Epic give up the ghost and resubmit to align with another patch further down the line? As long as it happens before my Fortnite Crew subscription expires, I’ll let the delay slide this one time.
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