Fortnite’s absence on Xbox Cloud Gaming service a ‘deliberate decision’ by Epic Games

“We viewed Microsoft’s efforts with xCloud to be competitive with our offerings,” Joe Kreiner, Epic’s VP, business development said in a deposition, as part of the ongoing lawsuit between Epic Games and Apple.

The subsequent section of the document is redacted and may contain further elaboration from Kreiner.

Kreiner spoke about the availability of Fortnite on Nvidia’s cloud gaming service – GeForce Now – which lets gamers access their library of games purchased on multiple storefronts such as Steam, Epic Games Store, and other online stores. Nvidia’s service also allows iOS users to play Fortnite via their device’s browser, in a way bypassing Apple’s ban on Fortnite.

Apple had removed Fortnite from App Store for violating the company’s in-app payment guidelines. Apple’s App Store policy allows it to take a cut for most in-app payments and app subscriptions. Similarly, for Microsoft’s Cloud Gaming service, all the transactions go through the company’s payment channel, and it does not permit other storefronts. According to Kreiner, Epic Games has not tried to negotiate around the requirement to have to go through Microsoft’s commerce engine.

In the current set up, when people purchase Fortnite from the Epic Games Store and play it through Nvidia’s GeForce Now, the revenue including payment for purchasing the game, as well as the in-app payments directly go to the Fortnite-maker.

Surprising probably no one, the NPD Group's latest data shows that Epic's battle royale game Fortnite had the most unique active users in March in the US across PlayStation and Xbox. As you can see in the chart below, shared by the NPD's Mat Piscatella, Fortnite was number one for both PlayStation and Xbox.

One game that is noticeably absent is Call of Duty: Warzone, which is immensely popular with 100 million players and counting. Piscatella said in a follow-up tweet that Warzone's player numbers are accounted for based on where it's launched from. Because Warzone can be launched directly from Black Ops Cold War and Modern Warfare, its numbers are baked into those games.

It will be interesting to see if any battle royale game can catch up to Fortnite when it comes to active users. Warzone should post big numbers for April given its massive Season 3 update that included a new Verdansk '84 map for the battle royale game as part of the game's latest special event.

Allegedly leaked documents that also showed Microsoft's plan to cut its profit share for games sold on the Xbox Store also suggest STALKER 2 will not be an Xbox console exclusive for long.

Currently set to a 30% revenue split on game sales, the Xbox Store will change to give Microsoft just 12% of the profits from digital game sales, according to court documents obtained by The Verge that also touch on a potentially very limited exclusivity period for STALKER 2. According to the document, it will only be on Microsoft systems for three months before it can come to other platforms.

The documents say the Xbox Store change will happen at some point this year, but it's not clear if a provision requiring exclusive streaming rights for PC games will take effect. PC games using the split would need to be on xCloud, should that still stand.