by Jason Snell
Epic’s app store is still in conflict with Apple
Emma Roth and Jay Peters of The Verge have a nice overview of the current state of affairs for app developers and alternative app marketplaces in the EU:
Epic’s game store may offer better terms for developers, but every developer, Epic included, is still subject to fees from Apple, even outside the confines of the App Store. And Apple’s terms and fees for apps on alternative marketplaces are so onerous that Epic has a big hill to climb to convince developers that it’s worth the time and money to list their apps at all.
This is the thing about how Apple has constructed the rules for alternative app marketplaces in the EU: It has built a system of mandatory fees that reduce (or even entirely remove) any incentive about offering apps outside the App Store. Other than apps with very specific business models and apps in categories that Apple refuses to approve, many mainstream apps will find that leaving the App Store doesn’t make sense financially.
I would argue that this is all by Apple’s design. Whether the European Commission regulators think it fails to establish the competitive marketplaces that the Digital Markets Act was attempting to create, well, that’s for the EC to decide.