Fortnite’s wider iOS return pulled in 3.4 million downloads in a week

Fortnite’s wider return to iOS appears to have brought a lot of lapsed mobile players back in. The game was downloaded an estimated 3.4 million times in its first seven days after the latest global rollout, making it Fortnite’s strongest App Store week since its original launch month in 2018.

That estimate comes from AppMagic data cited by PocketGamer. The week nearly matched Fortnite’s 3.7 million-download launch week on iOS and beat its second week, which hit 3.1 million. It was reportedly the game’s fourth-biggest App Store week overall.

The biggest iOS markets during the relaunch weren’t led by the US. Saudi Arabia topped the list with 474,000 installs, followed by France at 366,000 and the UK at 307,000. The US saw 151,000 installs in the same period.

Daily downloads jumped hard once the wider rollout began, rising from about 19,000 on May 18 to nearly 290,000 on May 19. The peak came on May 23, when Fortnite hit 674,000 iOS downloads in a single day. That’s still below the game’s all-time daily iOS record of 764,000 from its original launch, but above the previous recent peak tied to its US return.

Fortnite first launched on iOS in March 2018, then was removed from the App Store in 2020 during Epic’s dispute with Apple over payments. The game had already returned in some markets before this latest expansion, which brought it back to more countries including Germany, the UK, Canada, and Japan.

Australia is still the exception. Fortnite remains unavailable on iOS there, with Epic blaming what it calls an “illegal payment arrangement with Apple.”