DMA Regulations Just Made iOS Better, Epic Games Says

Thanks to EU regulations, Apple has been forced to improve iOS for developers and users in meaningful ways. And despite years of pushback from the belligerent monopolist, those efforts are finally paying off.

“In response to ongoing Digital Markets Act enforcement, Apple has significantly improved the process for installing alternative app stores from the web in the European Union with iOS,” Epic Games explains. “They’ve reduced the install flow from 15 steps to 6, eliminating their former scare screen and its misleading message, and eliminated a dead-end that left the user stranded in iOS Settings. As a result, we’ve seen a stunning 60 percent decrease in player drop-off during attempts to install the Epic Games Store.”

Apple’s previous changes to iOS in response to its legal requirements under the DMA, its so-called compliance non-compliance, were so onerous and purposefully scary to customers that over 65 percent of them who tried to install the Epic Games Store simply gave up, “thwarted by Apple’s deceptive design.” But now that the EU has forced Apple to actually comply with the law, the drop-off rate has fallen to 25 percent and it continues trending down as users install new iOS versions.

This, Epic Games says, proves that Apple’s original compliance was purposefully deceptive and designed to harm competition. But Apple continues to violate the DMA, too, of course. And the result is that far fewer developers are willing to distribute mobile games through the Epic Games Store on iOS than the Epic Games Store on Android.

“Apple’s policy towards competing stores continues to violate the Digital Markets Act,” Epic explains. “They are thwarting competition through anticompetitive junk fees such as their Core Technology Fee, discriminatory policies retaliating against developers who support competing stores by making their terms on the iOS App Store worse, and by imposing an approval and notarization process in order to dictate product design decisions to competing app developers and store developers. These Apple policies are unlawful and stand in stark contrast to the operation of Apple’s own Mac platform, which does none of these things.”

But don’t worry, Google is also violating the DMA: Epic notes that Google has yet to improve its similarly scary and purposefully misleading alternative app store process on Android, which involves a 12-step process.

“Google continues to blatantly violate the Digital Markets Act with a 12-step install flow, a misleading scare screen that says software from prominent and reputable Google competitors ‘may be harmful’,” Epic says. “On Android worldwide, Google’s deceptive user interface sabotages Epic Games Store install attempts on Android more than 50 percent of the time. Beyond the EU, Epic is challenging this behavior in the United States in the new Epic v. Google case.”

The Epic Games post neatly documents each respective platform’s multi-step processes for getting an alternative app store installed if you’re curious about the gory details.