The dream of a successful Epic Games Store on iOS sounds like an oasis: a thriving alternative app store that exists outside Apple’s walled gardens, where developers won’t have to pay Apple’s commission for in-app purchases, and where they can use whatever payment processor they want.
Epic’s store launched last week in the European Union — thanks to new regulations opening up iOS — and it’s likely to be a boon for Epic and its perennial hit, Fortnite. However, it’s not clear whether Epic will be able to grow the store far beyond its own games. The company wants to welcome in a vibrant ecosystem of third-party developers, but moving to the Epic Games Store could be an impossible ask for any company that doesn’t make Fortnite-sized piles of cash.
To sell a game outside Apple’s App Store, developers must pay a fee once they reach a certain number of downloads. If developers want to link users to purchases outside the app, they’ll also need to pay a commission on all sales made. This is on top of a commission on purchases made within one year of the app’s installation. Then, they’d have to pay any fees charged by the operator of the new marketplace. In Epic’s case, that’s 12 percent.
For non-Epic developers, Apple’s per-user fee applies to users on both third-party marketplaces and its own App Store. This fee can be untenable for developers with a large number of downloads. Apple doesn’t subject the developers of free apps with no monetization to its per-user fee. However, the rest of the developer community is expected to pay the same fees as a giant like Epic Games.
It might take a long while for the iOS Epic Games Store to be profitable for Epic, if it ever happens. The company expects to start filling up the store later this year, even if it’s only in small numbers at first. Epic is making a “very hopeful push” to bring those games to iOS, even though it is “a very tough conversation.”