Epic Games today officially launched a rival app store for iOS in the European Union, marking the first time that Apple’s App Store has had to face a serious rival. The Epic Games Store will initially offer Epic’s games, including Fortnitefor users to download to their iPhones, with plans to begin adding games from third-party developers starting in December.
The launch, the most dramatic result of a raft of new EU tech rules passed over the past year, brings the long-running rivalry between Epic and Apple to European soil. Epic says its app store will charge a maximum commission of 12 percent on sales, which is a lower price than Apple’s App Store, where commissions can be as high as 30 percent. The Epic Games Store, says Max von Thun, Europe director at the Open Markets Institute, has “a good chance of taking a big slice of Apple’s lucrative app store business.”
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney hailed the arrival of the Epic Games Store on iOS as a way to fix the “largely broken” mobile gaming industry. “Competition would not crush Apple’s App Store,” he said. “It would force Apple to compete with better pricing, better features, better promotions, better marketing deals, and less advertising.”
Epic is making use of a new EU regulation known as the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which forces tech giants to make changes to give rivals more access to their heavily protected user communities. In Apple’s case, that means the company has to allow alternative app stores on European devices.
“The European example shows that this type of regulation can be potent and successful,” Sweeney said, adding that this may be a model for other regulators. Apple has changed its trading terms for European developers four times this year in an attempt to avoid EU fines for failing to comply with the DMA — penalties that could amount to as much as 10 percent of Apple’s global revenue — while implying that alternative app stores are a security disaster waiting to happen.
For others, the arrival of the Epic Games Store on iOS is a sign that the EU may force tech giants to change. “The alternative app store could become the most visible way to show how competition can work,” Andreas Schwab, a member of the European Parliament who helped draft the DMA, tells WIRED. Alternative app stores demonstrate that “the DMA can stimulate competition and therefore reduce prices for consumers,” Schwab adds.
Epic’s development is a blow to Apple’s hegemony in iOS apps. Sixteen years ago, the company launched its App Store, described by WIRED at the time as a “defining moment in the history of personal computing.” Apple grew that business to generate 1.1 trillion dollars in sales in 2022; it is now one of the company’s main revenue drivers.
Over the years, however, developers making iOS apps slowly began to turn against the company. First, developers complained about the commission (30 percent at its peak) that Apple took on some in-app payments. Then came privacy changes (most notably, the “Ask App Not to Track” option), which cut into app ad revenue by an estimated $100 billion. 12 billion dollars The problem was that Facebook wasn’t the only one affected. Finally, there were rules about what developers could and couldn’t submit to the app store. For example, app updates that included links to the company’s website weren’t allowed.