Epic Games plans to add nearly 20 third-party games onto its mobile app store worldwide on Android and in the European Union on iOS and launching its free games program on mobile beginning with Bloons TD 6 and Dungeon of the Endless: Apogee. It’s also promising to pay some iOS fees for developers that are part of the program to overcome what Epic calls a major hurdle to moving outside the App Store.

“Our aim here isn’t just to launch a bunch of different stores in different places, but to build a single, cross-platform store in which, within the era of multi-platform games, if you buy a game or digital items in one place, you have the ability to own them everywhere,” Epic CEO Tim Sweeney told reporters during a press briefing. Under the program, Epic will offer new free games in the store each month before eventually switching to a weekly schedule.

To sweeten the deal for developers that participate in the free games program on iOS, Epic will help defray the cost of using third-party marketplaces. For one year, it will pay these developers’ Core Technology Fee (CTF): a 50 euro cent fee levied on every install of an iOS app that uses third-party stores after it exceeds 1 million annual downloads. (Apple gives developers with less than €10 million in global revenue a three-year on-ramp.)

Epic has been an outspoken critic of the CTF. In a blog post shared with The Verge, it laments that “even if a developer decides to list just one game on the Epic Games Store, they have to pay the fee every time any of their games are downloaded on iPhones or iPads, whether it’s from the Apple App Store or an alternative store.” The fee is “ruinous for any hopes of a competing store getting a foothold,” Sweeney says. And while Epic will lose money by paying the CTF for these developers, he says, “we feel like we have to be the ones breaking the logjam there.”

The company hopes the EU will take action on what it alleges is a violation of the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which governs digital competition. Epic writes in its blog post that covering the fee “is not financially viable for every third party app store or for Epic long term, but we’ll do it while the European Commission investigates Apple’s non-compliance with the law.”

It’s the latest maneuver in a long-running fight between Epic and the mobile operating system developers Apple and Google. The game maker has challenged both companies over their practices in the US with mixed success, and it’s hoping that the European Union will take up its cause. The iOS Epic Games Store is EU-only because Apple has been forced to open up its ecosystem there under the DMA; it continues to say its restrictions elsewhere are meant to protect the security of its system.

Epic argues many mobile game developers aren’t on its store because Apple and Google discourage them with restrictions and fees. The company quotes anonymous game developers — their identities withheld to avoid retaliation from Apple, it says — citing the CTF as a deterrent.

Epic had far fewer installs of its mobile store since its launch than it anticipated: just 29 million at the end of 2024, it says in its blog post, compared to its goal of 100 million. It attributes this partly to friction like mobile “scare screens,” which it says drive away users from installing the Epic Games Store more than 50 percent of the time.

With a doubled install base plus any network effects where users got their friends to join, “I think it would have been easy for us to get to 100 million users,” Sweeney claims. Ultimately, he adds, “We won’t really have app store freedom, even in Europe, and actual user choice and competition, unless the DMA is robustly enforced.”

Epic has been fighting this battle for a long time, with its flashy 2020 lawsuit against Apple marking a key turning point. But Sweeney is prepared for the fight to continue for the better part of this decade. Even with a new US president who looks fairly cozy with big tech, Sweeney says he’s still optimistic Donald Trump’s appointees are prepared to take on the industry.

“The ridiculous irony is that Epic Games is able to fully compete with the App Store on equal terms only in Europe,” Sweeney says. “In America, we are blocked from it. And in America, a US citizen cannot obtain Fortnite [on iOS] — it is blocked from you by Apple. I think that’s ridiculous, and that needs to change, and it will change.”

Update, January 23rd: After we published this article, which was scheduled to publish at an Epic-provided embargo time, Epic spokesperson Natalie Munoz told The Verge that the “launch of third party games on the Epic Games Store is slightly delayed.” We’ve made small adjustments to the piece to reflect that.

https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/23/24349542/epic-games-third-party-developers-apple-google-europe