Epic Games Store for iOS in the EU
The latest addition, the Epic Games Store, now offers iOS-using Euro-folk access to entertainment titles like Fortnite, Rocket League Sideswipe and Fall Guys.
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The process for installing the Epic Games Store on iOS in the EU is rather convoluted, requiring numerous steps as demonstrated in this video. Epic attributes this “to Apple and Google introducing intentionally poor-quality install experiences laden by multiple steps, confusing device settings, and scare screens,” and says it’s pursuing the issue in court.
Fortnite has been unavailable on iOS since 2020, when Apple banned the game in response to App Store Guidelines violations and Epic sued Apple in the US.
Going forward, Epic will have to deal with navigating Apple’s new fee structure, including a “Core Technology Fee” of €0.50 per install per year after the first million installs. This fee applies to both the Epic Games Store itself and the games within it, effectively doubling the charge for popular titles like Fortnite. The EU commission is currently investigating whether Apple’s new fee structure complies with the Digital Markets Act.
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The Epic Games Store is only available on iPhones running iOS 17.4 or later, while iPad users will have to wait until the release of iPadOS 18 to access the store on their devices.
Stephen Totilo (via John Voorhees):
Epic’s efforts have been costly for a giant fighting even larger titans.
The company has spent hundreds of millions battling Apple and Google since 2020 to get to this point, Sweeney told Game File during an interview conducted earlier this week.
And, he added, Epic may have missed out on as much as $1 billion in Fortnite revenue in the process.
But Sweeney feels those costs have been worth it.
It’s been a long, winding, angry path to get to this point. In the battle between Epic and Apple, there remains some debate about who really has won up to this point. But there isn’t much dispute that, whether you want to blame Apple or Epic or both, users sure haven’t been the winners.
Previously:
- Epic Games Pays AltStore PAL’s CTF
- Epic Games Store Temporarily Allowed
- Epic Games Store Blocked via Notarization
- App Marketplaces: AltStore and Epic Games Store
- Epic Direct Payment
Update (2024-08-19): Brome:
After a lot of unsuccessful attempts yesterday, I finally discovered that the installation of the Epic marketplace has to be launched from Safari, not from a third-party browser.
See also: Hacker News.
Update (2024-08-22): Emma Roth and Jay Peters:
But it’s not clear whether Epic will be able to grow the store far beyond its own games. The company wants to welcome in a vibrant ecosystem of third-party developers, but moving to the Epic Games Store could be an impossible ask for any company that doesn’t make Fortnite-sized piles of cash.
“It just seems like a lose-lose-lose for Apple, developers, and consumers,” says Bob Roberts, the developer of Roundguard at the indie game studio Wonderbelly Games. “It just makes life more complex and confusing without really improving the situation the way folks imagined it would.”
Epic’s game store may offer better terms for developers, but every developer, Epic included, is still subject to fees from Apple, even outside the confines of the App Store. And Apple’s terms and fees for apps on alternative marketplaces are so onerous that Epic has a big hill to climb to convince developers that it’s worth the time and money to list their apps at all.
Via Jason Snell:
This is the thing about how Apple has constructed the rules for alternative app marketplaces in the EU: It has built a system of mandatory fees that reduce (or even entirely remove) any incentive about offering apps outside the App Store.
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I would argue that this is all by Apple’s design. Whether the European Commission regulators think it fails to establish the competitive marketplaces that the Digital Markets Act was attempting to create, well, that’s for the EC to decide.
I don’t actually want to use an alternative App Store, but I still want them to exist for the peer pressure. Apple should do sth for its money, and not just stay stagnant and collect the money 🤷♀️ Competition is a good thing, lock-in is not.
