Fortnite maker Epic Games and Spotify are testing Apple’s new App Store policies by submitting apps for review that would have previously never been allowed. On Friday, both companies submitted new versions of their respective apps to Apple’s App Review.
For Epic Games, it would mean the return of Fortnite to the App Store. Apple removed the game in 2020 and terminated Epic’s account after the company challenged the App Store rules by adding support for direct payments in Fortnite, ahead of filing its antitrust lawsuit against Apple.
Spotify, meanwhile, hopes to allow its users to buy individual audiobooks directly and allow Premium subscribers to buy “top up” hours for audiobook listening. (These hours can be purchased when subscribers go over the 15 free hours they receive each month.)
The streamer’s latest update comes on the heels of Apple’s approval this week of the Amazon Kindle app, which added a “Buy Book” button for the first time. It also follows the approval Spotify received last week, which let U.S. users access pricing information for its subscription plans inside its streaming app, among other things.
In time, more apps will likely join Epic Games and Spotify to take advantage of the new App Store policies.
For tech companies like Epic and Spotify, the App Store policy change the judge required in the lawsuit is about boosting their bottom lines, but for smaller developers, it could impact their ability to exist at all, as it permits new business models to thrive.
The updated App Store policies were rolled out last week after Apple lost a major legal battle in the antitrust case filed by Epic Games, when a federal judge ruled that Apple had not followed the court’s orders around in-app purchases. Though Apple largely won that lawsuit, the judge directed the tech giant to be more competitive when it comes to payment processing.
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Instead of allowing developers to link out to their website to offer consumers another way to pay for things like virtual goods or subscriptions, Apple had been requiring developers to apply for that permission. If granted, developers then also had to format how the links appeared in their apps to Apple’s liking, which included the use of “scare screens” to warn consumers of the dangers of purchases made outside Apple’s walls.
Most importantly, Apple was continuing to charge a hefty commission on those web sales of 27%, down from 30% before the changes.
None of that was what the judge had in mind, so it forced Apple to drop its anticompetitive barriers and allow developers to link to web purchase options without any additional hoops to jump through, and without commissions.
