Epic Games wants court order to reinstate Fortnite on iOS

Epic Games has taken further legal action against Apple in an effort to get Fortnite back on the App Store.

The company filed the motion on Friday, calling on the judge handling its ongoing case to award a preliminary injunction that would see the popular battle royale game and Epic's related account in Apple's Developer Program restored.

The Fortnite firm previously won a partial preliminary injunction preventing Apple from blocking Unreal Engine on iOS, successfully arguing this would damage the many third-party developers that use it.

However, the ban on Fortnite was not lifted.

In its new motion, Epic requested an injunction that achieved four things, the first to prevent Apple from removing or blocking Fortnite or any other Epic app based on the fact Epic was using direct payment to avoid Apple's 30% transaction fee.

This request included protection for updates. Epic Games is currently unable to update Fortnite on iOS, meaning users have not been able to participate in the latest in-game events -- a fact Epic turned into an event of its own.

The second was to prevent Apple from "taking any adverse action against Epic," such as suspending or terminating its Developer Program account, while the third was to restrain Apple from removing, disabling or modifying any of Fortnite's code on iOS.

Finally, the company wants the account responsible for Fortnite restored to Apple's Developer Program.

Epic believes the injunction should be granted because the company is "likely to succeed on [its] merits" in the overall case -- something the court has disagreed with so far.

In the previous ruling awarding Epic's partial injunction, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said "the Court cannot conclude that Epic has met the high burden of demonstrating a likelihood of success on the merits, especially in the antitrust context."

Epic also claimed that, without the injunction, it will suffer irreparable harm -- something else Rogers disagreed with, as the situation "appears of its own making" -- and that such a ruling would be in the public interest.

In a statement to CNN Business, Epic said the motion was designed to "stop Apple from retaliating against [us] for daring to challenge Apple's misconduct while our antitrust case proceeds."

An Apple statement reminded the site the court has already "recommended that Epic company with the App Store guidelines while their case moves forward, guidelines they've followed for the past decade until they created this situation."

The statement added: "We hope that we can work together again in the future, but unfortunately that is not possible today."

Epic Games has filed antitrust lawsuits against both Apple and Google after each company removed Fortnite from their app stores.

The battle royale's ban was implemented after Epic Games introduced direct payment options, violating the guidelines for each marketplace that stipulate Apple and Google should receive a 30% cut of all transactions.

The game's subsequent removal was something Epic Games has planned for, as indicated by the rapid filing of its lawsuits and the pre-prepared short film inciting its Free Fortnite campaign.