Apple Allows Epic Games Store in Europe

By: Nick Gambino

According to Reuters, Apple has finally approved the Epic Games Store for iOS and iPadOS devices in Europe.

Apple and Epic Games have been at war for years now over Apple’s decision to kick Fortnite from the App Store. While they had their reasons, Epic was not going to go quietly into the night, setting off a back-and-forth that is still not fully resolved.

It all started in 2020 with Epic Games challenging Apple’s iron-clad model of carving out 30% of all in-app purchases from any app that was hosted and downloaded through their App Store. And by “challenge” I mean they just refused to pay it, claiming it was unfair.

Apple responded by giving them the boot. Those who play the super popular Fortnite on iOS or iPadOS were left with no game to play. So Epic Games did the only thing they could do, they went to court, lobbing criticisms of antitrust violations and the creation of an app store monopoly.

While that battle is still very much in play in the U.S., Epic scored a big win in Europe thanks to the EU’S new Digital Markets Act (DMA). This new bit of legislation demands that companies like Apple open up their ecosystem to other app stores and direct downloads from websites. In other words, they can’t force users to download only from their App Store.

This of course opened up the playing field for Epic Games to bring Fortnite back to iOS and iPadOS in Europe, creating their own app store and keeping all the money in the process.

As is par for the course with these two, it didn’t happen without a final skirmish. Epic took to X to claim Apple kept rejecting the addition of their store for trivial reasons. Apparently Apple said their “Install” and “In-app purchases” buttons looked too much like Apple’s “Get” and “In-app purchases” buttons respectively.