Epic Games Plans for Alternative App Marketplace in EU as Apple Reinstates Developer Account
Epic Games today announced plans to bring the Epic Games Store to iOS in the European Union, with Apple reinstating the company's developer account.
In its 2023 Year in Review, Epic said that it received its Apple Developer Account and would soon start developing an alternative app marketplace. The Epic Games Store will launch on iOS in the EU at some point in 2024, and it will provide a way for Epic Games to bring a Fortnite app to iOS once again.
Fortnite was removed from the iOS App Store at the start of the Epic Games v. Apple feud in 2020, and it has been unavailable since then. Epic Games did bring it to iPhones and iPads through Xbox Cloud Gaming and GeForce NOW, but the game has only been accessible through these browser-based services.
Shortly after Apple's alternative app marketplace plan was announced, Epic Games promised that Fortnite would "return to iOS" in Europe, and at the same time, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney lambasted Apple's plan to comply with the DMA. He called it a "devious new instance of Malicious Compliance" and said that the company "strongly reject[s] Apple's twisting this process to undermine competition and continue imposing Apple taxes on transactions they're not involved in."
While working to implement the Epic Games Store on iOS, Epic also plans to continue to "argue to the courts and regulators that Apple is breaking the law."
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Top Rated Comments
I personally am thankful for the Epic efforts vs Apple
Apple has become too large and too powerful and they've shown a desire and track record of abusing that position.
I appreciate any form of push back against that.
And congratulations on creating a more competitive environment for apps for your devices. As history has pretty much always shown, where there is competition, there are lower prices... along with a natural pressure to out-value competitors to woo buyers. Where there is no competition, there is no incentive to lower prices- in fact, it's just the opposite to maximize revenue & profit for the sole shopkeeper.
You will now have access to apps that some of us OUTSIDE of the EU would also love to enjoy on devices we own, not because those apps won't work on our iDevices too and not because they are loaded with bank-account-draining viruses created by crime syndicates to completely destroy lives... but because you have a new law that says you can have access to them and we have a corporation that says we can't. You'll have new stores where the creators of those apps can make a bit more for their work while potentially selling their apps to you for less, while we have a single store where the first in line at the profit trough is the ONE store owner, NOT the app developer. But obviously, our way is the superior way. We pay more, app developer makes less but maximizing for the ONE store owner is all that really matters.
You now have the ability to do with your iDevices what we've all been able to do with our Macs for all of the years we've owned Macs: buy Apps from more than a single source, including in deeply discounted app bundles. I would place bets that many of the people who will rail against this enhanced consumer freedom- again- probably has at least one app on their own Mac that they did NOT get from the Apple Mac App Store... if not many. But "we'll" rail anyway because the Corp doesn't want to lose its exclusive hold as the SOLE store and the very lucrative cash that comes from taking a great big bite out of every transaction within that single store... so "we" will always side with the Corp even over our own best interests as consumers. Fantastically profitable Corp knows better than the people who own the products... and deserves more than the developers who create & maintain the apps.
And cue up another 200 posts about the flood of viruses, trojans, locusts, frogs, plague, vermin and devastation about to rain upon the EU... because as we Mac owners know, that's exactly what it's been for us in all of these years of having the very same app choice flexibility in buying apps for our Macs. We've barely survived the relentless misery of that freedom and now you'll be dealing with the same on your iDevices.
As an American, I envy your greater freedoms of consumer choice. Enjoy them!
HAHAHAHAHA
To be honest I will not be using any App Store other than Apple's and I definitely will not be side loading any apps. I prefer know that Apple's security works.
In August 2020, Fortnite was possibly at it's biggest point with the launch of a new season featuring some of the biggest Marvel characters (also at a time when Marvel - the MCU - was at its biggest). This is the moment that Epic played their hand. I really think they thought the power of both Fortnite and Marvel would compel Apple to fold.
It did not.
There were minor victories for Epic along the way that some would say benefit developers, but even more so smaller developers.
I cannot imagine how much money Epic left on the table by pulling out of the App Store at that moment. Crazy.