Epic Games officially launched a rival app store for iOS in the European Union today, marking the first time Apple's own App Store has gone up against a serious competitor. The Epic Games Store will initially feature Epic's games, including Fortnitethat users can download to their iPhone. There are plans to offer games from third-party developers starting in December.
The launch, the most dramatic outcome of a raft of new EU tech rules passed over the past year, imports the longstanding rivalry between Epic and Apple onto European soil. Epic says its app store will take a maximum 12 percent commission on sales, below Apple’s App Store, which can take as much 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 bite out of Apple’s very lucrative app store business.”
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney touted the arrival of the Epic Games Store on iOS as a way to fix the “largely broken” mobile gaming industry. “Competition wouldn't crush Apple's App Store,” he said. “It would force Apple to compete with better prices and better features and better promotions and better marketing deals and less advertising.”
Epic is taking advantage of a new EU regulation known as the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which forces tech giants to implement changes to give rivals more access to their closely guarded user communities. In Apple’s case, that means the company must allow alternative app stores on European devices.
“The European example shows that this kind of regulation can have teeth and can succeed,” Sweeney said, adding that it could be a blueprint for other regulators. Apple has changed its terms of business for European developers four times this year in an attempt to avoid EU fines for failing to comply with the DMA — penalties that can amount to up to 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 could 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, told WIRED. Alternative app stores prove “that the DMA can stimulate competition and thus lower prices for consumers,” Schwab added.
The Epic development is a blow to Apple’s hegemony in iOS apps. Sixteen years ago, the company launched its App Store marketplace in a WIRED account that was described at the time as “a defining moment in the history of personal computing.” Apple grew that business to $1.1 trillion in revenue by 2022; it’s now one of the company’s biggest sources of revenue.
But over the years, the developers who made iOS apps slowly began to turn against the company. First, developers chafed at the commission—30 percent at its peak—that Apple took from some in-app payments. There were the privacy changes—most notably the “Ask App Not To Track” option, which eroded apps’ ad revenue, amounting to an estimated $12 billion hit to Facebook alone. Finally, there were the rules about what developers could and couldn’t send to the app store. App updates that included links to the company’s website, for example, weren’t allowed.
