Following Apple‘s decision to boot Fortnite from the App Store, many sellers on e-commerce portals are offering iPhone models with the game pre-installed. When we checked earlier today, some of those devices were listed for astronomical sums on eBay. One case in point is a 256GB iPhone 11 Pro Max, which had as asking price of $20,000. The device normally costs about $1,250 at full retail in the US.
A number of other iPhone models are also available at varying price-points, including an iPhone X – a three-year-old model – for $10,000 and an iPhone 8 Plus of similar vintage for $3,250. One of the cheapest models I spotted was an iPhone 6s with a price-tag of $199. Of course ‘Fortnite pre-installed’ was the biggest sales pitch for all these devices. It’s not immediately clear as to how may people are actually buying these phones, but that isn’t preventing sellers from listing them anyways.
The crazy developments are the result are Apple banning Fortnite from its App Store last week after Epic Games introduced a new in-game payment processing option to save the 30% commission that the iPhone-maker charges for every transaction done through the App Store. The matter has escalated significantly since then, with Epic suing Apple for monopolistic trade practices and Apple threatening to terminate Epic’s developer accounts on Mac and iOS.
Epic is now taking its battle against the Cupertino giant to the masses, announcing a ‘#FreeFortnite’ tournament with anti-Apple prizes that include an Alienware laptop, a Galaxy Tab S7, a OnePlus 8 smartphone, a PlayStation 4 Pro, an Xbox One X, or a Nintendo Switch. With neither side willing to back down from their stated stance, it will be interesting to see how this thing pans out going forward.
