Epic has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in legal fees fighting Apple in court, Sweeney said. He added that this is in addition to lost revenue incurred when Apple banned Fortnite from its App Store in 2020. Still, Sweeney said he thinks all the expense was worth it: “There’s really no price that’s not worth paying for freedom for all developers in the future of gaming.”
The Epic Games Store launched globally on PC and Mac in 2018. The launch of the iOS version means that the company’s European users can now also visit Epic.download to download the Epic Games Store onto their phones, which can in turn be used to download apps onto iPhones. Still, the iOS installation is a cumbersome, 15-step process, according to Epic, featuring what the company calls “fear screens” and dead ends. Epic claims that Apple has made the user experience “intentionally low-quality” to discourage apply of alternative app stores.
Sweeney had some sarcastic words for Apple. “They could have made an amazing open platform with iOS,” he said. “They just decided to make it a terrible platform because they still think they can get away with it.” He criticized Apple’s terms, which penalize developers who submit their apps to both Apple’s App Store and alternative app stores like Epic. Because of that, “almost all” of the top 250 mobile game developers have told Epic they won’t submit their apps to the Epic Games Store, according to Steve Allison, vice president and general manager of the Epic Games Store.
Apple spokesman Fred Sainz denies that Apple’s business terms discourage app developers from working with alternative app stores, saying 99 percent of developers will not have to pay Apple so-called core technology fees (described by critics as alternative app store tax). He also dismisses the idea that the company is making it harder to apply alternative iOS app stores, saying the download process is just five steps, not 15. “The DMA required us to provide new options for developers in the EU,” he says in a statement to WIRED, “and we’ve worked to make them as easy as possible for users while also protecting their privacy and security.”
Today, Epic also announced that it would be adding its games to other EU app stores, including AltStore, a Dallas-based alternative store that currently has 150,000 European users. Since 2019, co-founders Riley Testut and Shane Gill have been running what they describe as an “unofficial” alternative app store, where users from around the world would send the duo their Apple ID and password to access AltStore’s video game console emulator, Delta. When they heard about the European DMA, they decided to take the opportunity to go legal and launch an official version of AltStore in the EU in April.
Like all alternative app stores, AltStore must pay Apple €0.50 ($0.55) for each user download or update. So far, the store has launched just six mobile apps in its European iOS app store — a number Testut and Gill blame on Apple’s lengthy approval process. One app, they said, took 65 days to get approved. Apple declined to comment on a specific example.