The information heralds the return of the wildly popular mobile game “Fortnite.” Video game giant Epic Games launched its mobile app store on Friday on Android devices worldwide and on iPhones and iPads in Europe, allowing users to bypass the interfaces of Google and Apple. This is a victory for the publisher, which has been searching in the courts and intervening with authorities for several years to force these two tech giants to open their operating systems to third-party companies’ stores, in particular so that they do not have to pay a commission on consumer purchases.
Epic Games will ultimately benefit from a change in regulations at the EU level. Indeed, the European Union’s Digital Markets Regulation recently imposed this opening to competition on the Old Continent, forcing Apple to make a concession that the Apple brand has not made anywhere else in the world. “We are very pleased to be launching our games on iOS and Android thanks to the new law,” Epic CEO Tim Sweeney said at a press conference from its headquarters in Sweden.
“This is just the beginning”
Thus, he sees his flagship title, Fortnite, making its return to iPhone and iPad, after being banned in 2020 when it sought to circumvent the rules and payment systems in place. Other very popular titles, such as Fall Guys (for the first time on mobile) and Rocket League Sideswipe, will be present at the store's launch.
To attract other developers to its store, the publisher specifically promises to share more revenue with them. “We have a goal of 100 million new installs on mobile before the end of the year,” said Steve Allison, director of the Epic Games Store. “The only thing that might stop us from achieving that is the brakes that Apple and Google are putting on us, and they are very big,” he lamented.
Epic denounces its store's “long and poor-quality installation process, with many steps and unclear settings” and the appearance of informational messages that, according to the company, can scare off customers. The group, which says it has nearly 250 developers, also points to fees imposed by Apple that, according to it, discourage them from coming to its store by reducing their profitability.
“This is just the beginning of a long effort to bring our games back to all these platforms around the world and the fight will not be over until Fortnite “It’s no longer on iOS everywhere and it’s free of Apple taxes,” Tim Sweeney insisted.
Apple responded by saying: “The DMA asked us to provide new features to EU developers, and we’ve worked to make them as simple as possible for users while trying to protect their privacy and security.”
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