The a four-year saga in detail Epic Games’ vs. Apple battle over in-app purchases is nearing a drawn-out climax. Epic plans to roll out its games, including the wildly popular ones Fortniteon the third-party app market AltStore, not just its own still-incoming Epic Games Store. This is good news for iOS users (at least in the EU), but bad news for Samsung fans as you will no longer find Fortnite or any other of Epic’s mobile titles in the Galaxy Store.
In January, Apple opened a crack in his infamous walled garden to comply with the Digital Markets Act of the European Union. This enabled third-party app stores on iOS for the first time in the iPhone’s 17-year history. After this news dropped, Epic declared Fortnite will return to iOS “via the Epic Games Store.” The company said it is leaving some app stores “which serve as rent collectors without competing robustly and serving all developers fairly.”
According to Epic, the company is pulling out of Samsung’s Galaxy store. Epic CEO Tim Sweeney said this is because Samsung blocks sideloading by default. Epic is suing Google, calling the Play Store anti-competitive. The company claimed in its post that Google offered Samsung “to limit competition in the Android app distribution market.” Fortnite is currently not on Google Play Store too.
As described in a report this week by Android Authority, new Samsung devices with One UI 6.1.1 block sideloading by default. Of course, you can re-enable it through settings, although most users won’t know when or where to do it.
In its Thursday blog post, Epic said its game marketplace “will roll out to Android worldwide and iOS in the European Union,” though it didn’t specify a specific date. This was announced by the company Fortnite and other Epic mobile games would end up in third-party iOS app stores in particular AltStore, for iPhone users in the EU. Those games are coming to two other third-party app stores “soon,” the company said.
In March, Apple terminated Epic’s developer account, citing that Epic was “verifiably untrustworthy” about its contractual agreements, according to a letter sent to the game publisher. Epic made this letter public and the CEO Tim Sweeney claims they lost their access because of his tweets against Apple. Apple told Gizmodo that the issue was due to “Epic’s gross breach of contractual obligations.” Two days later, Apple has been restored Epic EU developer account.
“We’ve long advocated for the rights of stores to exist and compete fairly on iOS and Android, and progress is being made around the world in the form of the DMA in Europe, similar laws in the UK and Japan, regulatory investigations around the world and a victory in the Epic v. Google lawsuit in the US.
Epic cites itself as having a better deal for developers. The company takes a 12% cut for all payments on the platform. The company explained that with these side-loaded game stores, there will be no additional costs due to third-party app store fees. By comparison, the biggest marketplace for PC games, Valve’s Steam platform, typically takes a 30% cut of game revenue.
The EU will be the first to get the Epic Games Store for iOS and Android later this year. The Play Store will be on iOS in the UK in second half of 2025.
We remind you that you do not necessarily need Fortnite app to play the game on iPhone or Android. You can stream it Xbox Cloud Gaming or other services like Amazon Luna if you trust your internet speeds to handle both your streaming and in-game latency.
Do Epic and Big Daddy Sweeney have a right to be angry? Yes, though only in terms of a company being constrained by the notorious high-walled gardens of both Android and iOS. But all these internal struggles hit consumers the hardest. A new player will probably not know where to go to actually play Fortnite or any other Epic mobile game. Until Epic finally releases its app store to both ecosystems, many players will be left sweating in their banana outfits, scratching their heads.
