EU Becomes Battleground as Epic Challenges Apple’s App Store Dominance

Rival app stores. New mobile ecosystems — and the major players in a battle that’s been waged over four years remain the same.

Epic’s challenge to Apple’s App Store practices has found a beachhead in Europe, where new legislation has redrawn the competitive map. The same concerns over app store creations, in-app payments and commissions have been raised in the states — and Apple has been able to block Epic’s launch of an app store on these shores — but the battle’s already being actively joined on the Continent, where Epic has just debuted a mobile app store.

The new store will offer slew of titles to gamers, including the Fortnite. In particular, and in terms of a shot across the bow at Apple, as it’s back on the tech giant’s iOS-powered hardware, Fortnite’s ambitions include luring 100 million new installations on mobile devices as it launches the rival app store.

There’s a competitive wrinkle here, we note, tied to the actual mechanics of downloading the offerings on the iPhones (and also Android devices).

In its posting announcing the launch of the Epic Games Store, Epic criticized Apple, and Google, too and contended, “We’re launching on iOS devices in the European Union thanks to the Digital Markets Act, but Apple is still blocking all other iOS users outside of Europe from accessing Fortnite and Epic Games Store for iOS. For now, the process of installing the Epic Games Store on iOS and Android is lengthy due to Apple and Google introducing intentionally poor-quality install experiences laden by multiple steps, confusing device settings, and scare screens.”

Epic continued, “We are continuing to fight in courts and work with regulators around the globe to eliminate the anticompetitive terms that Apple and Google impose on developers and consumers, so we can build a better store for everyone.”

The Payments Angle

As for the economics of the model, Epic had telegraphed a payments strategy in July — that getting gamers to transact within the Epic ecosystem, and in its app store would give “all developers great terms: a store fee of 12% for payments we process, and 0% on third party payments.” Apple, as has been widely reported, takes as much as 30% of sales as consumers download use those apps. The Epic fee structure, we note, and its alternative app store, help cement an ecosystem within the Apple/Google hardware setting.

The pathway toward doing so is paved by the EU’s Digital Markets Act, which mandates that firms like Apple give other companies, including competitors, expanded access to their installed base of users — and for Apple, the tech behemoth must accept different app stores, allowing them to be downloaded to European consumers’ devices.

In the Digital Markets Act itself, the so-called gatekeeper Big Tech firms “must allow third parties to inter-operate with the gatekeeper’s own services in certain specific situations” and “allow their business users to access the data that they generate in their use of the gatekeeper’s platform” while, additionally “allow[ing] their business users to promote their offer and conclude contracts with their customers outside the gatekeeper’s platform.”

The European developments may not presage what happens in the United States, or wholesale change to app store policies. But the company has let app makers add payment buttons that draw them to other sites in order to input their payment information. And as we have reported here, the company is now allowing apps and developers to use its contactless NFC technology to enable in-store payments. Bit by bit the mobile commerce, gaming, app developer and commission structures are changing.