Epic Games Today, a rival app store for iOS officially launched in the European Union, marking the first time that Apple’s App Store will face a serious rival. The Epic Games Store will initially offer Epic games, including Fortnitewill allow users to download games onto their iPhones and will also feature games from third-party developers starting in December.
The launch is the most dramatic of a series of new EU tech rules passed last year, and brings the long-running rivalry between Epic and Apple to European soil. Epic has said its app store will take a commission of up to 12 percent of sales, lower than Apple’s App Store, where commission can reach up to 30 percent. Max von Thun, European director of the Open Market Institute, said the Epic Games Store “is likely to benefit significantly from Apple’s highly profitable app store business.”
Epic CEO Tim Sweeney hailed the arrival of the Epic Games Store on iOS as a way to fix a “big, broken” mobile gaming industry, speaking to reporters on Wednesday. “Competition is not going to kill Apple’s App Store,” he said. “Apple is going to be forced to compete with better prices, better features, better promotions, better marketing deals and less advertising.”
Epic is taking advantage of new EU regulation called the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which requires tech giants to make changes to give competitors greater access to their closely guarded user communities. In Apple’s case, this means the company must allow alternative app stores on its European devices.
“The European example shows that this kind of regulation can be effective and successful,” Sweeney said, adding that it could serve as a model for other regulators. Apple has changed its terms of trade with European developers four times this year to try to avoid EU fines for not complying with the DMA, which could amount to up to 10% of Apple’s global revenue. It has also suggested that alternative app stores could be a security disaster.
For others, the arrival of the Epic Games Store on iOS is a sign that the EU can force change on tech giants. “Alternative app stores could be the most visible way to show how competition works,” 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 thereby lower prices for consumers,” Schwab added.
Epic’s move is a blow to Apple’s dominance of iOS apps. Sixteen years ago, the company launched its App Store marketplace, which WIRED called “a defining moment in the history of personal computing” at the time. Apple has grown the business, which generated $1.1 trillion in revenue in 2022, and is now one of the main drivers of the company’s revenue.
But over the years, iOS app developers slowly began to rebel against the company. First, they were unhappy with the fees Apple took from some in-app purchases (as much as 30% at its peak). Privacy changes (specifically the “Ask apps not to track me” option) reduced app advertising revenue, costing Facebook alone an estimated $12 billion. 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 were not allowed.
