In what could be a defining moment for gamers across Europe, Epic Games announced that its marquee title, Fortnite, will soon be available for download on iPhones and iPads via the alternative app store, AltStore. This development marked what could be one of the biggest ever shifts in the app distribution landscape and further underlined continued efforts by Epic Games to grow its reach while challenging traditional models of app stores.
AltStore PAL, created by Riley Testut and launched this April, is one of the very first alternative app stores on iOS. In the European Union, AltStore PAL allows distribution of apps outside the bounds of the Apple App Store. This store is business-to-business, operating under the Digital Markets Act in the EU, which encourages sideloading to open up the App ecosystem further to competition.
AltStore is an open-source store that hosts a number of popular apps, including Testut’s Delta game emulator and other apps belonging to third-party developers. More to the point, distributing apps via AltStore is free of cost for the developers, so Epic Games would not need to pay a fee to Testut for hosting Fortnite. However, Apple will still collect 0.50 euros per install for Fortnite once installations of the game have reached one million in a given year under its Core Technology Fee.
Cost breakdown for users and developers
For those who opt to install AltStore, there will be a minimal annual cost of 1.50 euros, which will be adequate to suffice for the CTF charged by Apple. This amount should let Testut offset Apple’s charges for each install of AltStore. Despite this cost, the move does present a transparent alternative for all users and all developers seeking options beyond Apple’s App Store standard policies.
Related
This move by Epic Games could only be part of an overall strategy to explore alternative distribution channels for Fortnite. The company said its next steps will include partnering with mobile stores that agree to better terms for developers, then permanently terminating their partnership with others-particularly those, to use Epic’s phrase, that engage in “rent collecting”. In this, Epic Games will also remove Fortnite and other titles from the Samsung Galaxy Store because the company has discovered that Samsung now blocks sideloading by default on its devices.
Future plans for Epic Games Store on iOS
Apart from the extension in Fortnite’s availability, Epic Games reiterated further its plans to launch the Epic Games Store in iOS within the European Union. Its store would charge a competitive fee: 12 percent of the value for those payments processed by Epic Games, and for third-party payments, that would be nothing. This would be more generous than Apple’s App Store, offering more to the developers, thus reshaping the mobile gaming and app distribution landscape.
Till then, just keep watching for updates on what Epic Games is up to and how the new ways of distributing mobile apps will change.