If there’s something we can learn from the long legal battle between Epic Games, Google, and Apple, is that more awareness was raised about the need for alternative app stores to exist and give the Apple App Store/Google Play Store some competition. Epic Games already has its own games storefront, and with Apple and Google being forced to relax its restrictions, it was going to be one of the very first companies to take advantage of it. Epic has now shared more details about that plan.
Epic Games has announced the launch of its online storefront of games for EU users. The platform will host a selection of games, most notably Fortnite, and it will be available for both iOS and Android users as an alternative app store that co-exists with Apple’s or Google’s. For now, at least the iOS version will launch only for Europe users—as a reminder, Apple’s relaxations on sideloading and third-party app stores are being rolled out only to Europe users as they’re meant to comply with EU law.
It’s not clear if the Epic Games Store for Android will be made available for Android users in the United States, but Android has historically been less restrictive of sideloading in general, so there’s a chance it might. Epic Games has had no problem distributing Fortnite to Android users outside the Google Play Store, as there’s an APK download on the game’s official website.
As for what we’ll have in this storefront, there will be Fortnite and a selection of other Epic Games software, as well as a selection of third-party content. The specifics of how a game developer might get their games published on the store is not clear yet, but we do know that Epic Games will apply the same policy as it does on PC regarding billing—it’ll take a 12% cut of game purchases, as well as a waiver of this for the first 6 months and the ability to use your own billing methods for in-app purchases freely.
The games store will be launched later in 2024, and we don’t have a more specific timeline just yet.
Source: Epic Games, 9to5Mac
