If you’ve ever wanted to play Fortnite on your phone but missed your chance after Apple yoinked the game, are you willing to pay up to $16,000 for the opportunity? Resellers have flooded eBay with Fortnite-installed iPhones for sale.
The lowest price for a pre-owned phone is $20 with the highest Buy It Now price at $18,000. One listing for an iPhone 11 Pro STARTS bids at $15,999. As of writing this article, there are 726 individual listings for “iphone fortnite installed” and over 3500 listings for “fortnite iphone.”
It shouldn’t come as a shock that so many people want to cash in on this unfortunate situation for iOS users. However, one thing the eBay listings conveniently do not mention is the fact that those Fortnite iPhone installs are no longer supported by the developers, Epic Games. Users can’t make any in-app purchases or update the game with the latest patches. Buying such an iPhone is nigh useless, but that won’t stop sellers from trying. Sadly, it won’t stop ignorant buyers, either.
That said, though, most of the highly priced iPhones do not have any bids. Either people are wising up to such opportunistic outrageous prices, or they understand that owning such a phone doesn’t include updates. Or perhaps it is both.
Will Fortnite be gone forever?
The answer to that question is almost definitely not. While there may be a stalemate now, all sides stand to lose too much money if they can not come to an agreement. Apple (and Google) and Epic Games may be playing the most asinine game of Chicken ever, but one will eventually cave. The question is whether such caving will happen in or outside of a courtroom.
Apple and Google both pulled Fortnite from their respective app stores after Epic Games pushed an update that allowed users to circumvent the app stores altogether. By doing so, Epic could sell its in-game currency, V-bucks, at a 30% discount compared to buying them through the app stores, since each store charged a 30% fee for all in-app purchases.
