Installing a third party app store on your iPhone

How do you install a third party app store on your Apple iPhone? Like, for example, the Epic Games Store?

It’s actually pretty hard to get a third party app store on your iPhone or iPad. At least it used to be, before the Digital Markets Act and the Epic Games Store. While there are plenty of blog posts suggesting “great App Store alternatives,” most of them are defunct, not for iOS, or look completely dodgy and super-risky.

Third party app stores for iOS

There are not that many third party app stores for non-jailbroken iPhones. Here are a few examples, along with what I found when trying to access them on my iPhone:

• Tweakbox: “server can’t be found”
• Tutu App: no response, connection timed out
• Appland: white label app store maker, no obvious way to install
• GetJar: Android and several other platforms, but no iOS
• AppValley: Redirects to TopStore, advertises “tweaked” apps and looks suspicious 

Thanks, but no thanks: I like my iPhone without spyware, adware, and tweaked apps that just might be stealing developers’ and publishers’ hard work and repackaging it.

There are some new options, though:

• Epic Store: actually works … but only in the EU
• AltStore PAL
• Setapp Mobile from long-time Mac software maker MacPaw
• Aptoide
• mobivention App marketplace

The Epic Games Store does in fact work, unlike many of the ones in the first list above. In fact, Epic has a lot of experience running app stores for multiple platforms. There is, however, another problem. At least, if you’re not in the European Union, where the Digital Markets Act actually matters. And it’s a bit of a fatal problem: you simply can’t install it.

Here’s the flow from my recent attempt:

 

 

You can try … but Epic will inform you that the Epic Games Store on iPhone is only available for customers in the European Union. You can still “continue anyways,” but then iOS will notice what’s going on, step in, and put a stop to these third party app store shenanigans by providing an alert that you cannot install this app. 

Clicking “learn more” brings you to Apple’s support documentation on installing third party app stores in the European Union … and not anywhere else.

Fortunately, some enterprising individuals who are in the European Union have actually installed the Epic Games Store, and shared their experiences. One is Julie Tonna, a user acquisition expert and former Apple employee. In fact, she was a platform specialist at Apple Search Ads with a focus on gaming. 

And she knows a bunch about adtech too: she’s also a former growth partnership manager at ironSource.

Installing the Epic Games Store in the European Union

If you live in the EU, it’s a whole different ball game. Now you can actually install a working third party app store.

Here’s how it works, according to Tonna’s LinkedIn post:

1. Visit epicgames.com on your iPhone or iPad
2. Tap the “Install on iOS” button, then confirm by tapping OK
3. Tell iOS you’re OK with this by going to Settings, hitting Allow For Marketplace, where Apple tells you that your device settings currently don’t allow it and that installing this app — and others via it — “may give them access to your data”, then confirm again
4. Go back to your browser and hit Install again, then confirm again
5. After the Epic Games app installs, you’ll be able to launch it from your home screen or App Library
6. Tap Accept yet again when you open the app to accept the Epic Games EULA
7. Find a game you like … and hit Install Game
8. In the prompt that pops up, hit the Install App button

It’s more than just a few steps, and there are plenty of warnings along the way that this is unusual, non-standard, and potentially dangerous behavior.

But now you’re cooking with gas: using apps and games via a real, functioning third party app store on iOS. 

At last, after more than 4 long years, you can yet again enjoy Fortnite on your iPhone. (Apple booted Fortnite off the iOS App Store in August of 202 when Epic turned on a direct payment option in the app that bypassed Apple’s in-app purchase system.)

 

 

Plus, if you happen to buy anything in Fortnite, the Epic Games Store will take just a 12% slice of your cash and Epic Games (the publisher) will get 88% of your payment … as opposed to 70% in most cases via typical in-app purchases on iOS.

If there are any other good third party app stores available for iOS, let me know. The list of potential app store providers out there is significant, and there are some pretty interesting names on it … but the list of actual functioning third party app stores is much smaller.

Will the Digital Markets Act spread to other countries?

The big question, of course, is whether the ideas around openness and competition in app stores and in-app purchases that are embedded in the EU’s Digital Markets Act will go viral to more countries. 

And in a lot of ways they already are. As I mentioned in a recent post on how the traditional App Store model is under attack both from above and from below, at least 6 other countries are looking at similar legislation:

• USA
• South Korea
• Japan
• Australia
• India
• UK

You can add the Netherlands to that list, as well as Spain, and even U.S. states are getting into the act.

Louisiana reportedly proposed legislation that would have required that Apple allow apps to use alternative payment methods without penalty. Apple was able to squash that particular piece of the law, according to the story that became public, but the fact that a small U.S. state was even considering something like this indicates that the idea is gaining traction in North America.

 

 

I talked about the core concepts in the Digital Markets Act that are relevant for app marketplace owners like Apple and Google in 2022. Essentially, large companies designated as “gatekeepers” are being forced to:

• Allow third-party interoperability with their services
• Allow businesses to promote their services and make sales outside the gatekeeper’s platform
• Not prevent consumers from connecting with businesses outside their platforms
• And much more …

The upshot will likely be the ability to install apps from wherever you want and use payment methods outside the platform-controlled services.

Apple’s rebuttal, of course, has been the Core Technology Fee, which even for a moderately successful free game with 10 million downloads would incur platform fees of over $400,000 per month. Which, naturally, the EU is investigating as a case of malicious compliance. 

Their initial take: not gonna work.

“We have sent preliminary findings to Apple,” says Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s executive VP in charge of competition policy. “Our preliminary position is that Apple does not fully allow steering. Steering is key to ensure that app developers are less dependent on gatekeepers’ app stores and for consumers to be aware of better offers.”

Ultimately, we’ll most likely have a long game of cat and mouse with government legislation, Apple/Google response, then threatened or actual fines … and eventually things will come mostly to rest with a better-if-not-great option for third party app stores on iOS.

And that’s likely to happen in most countries.

Just don’t hold your breath. The wheels of government turn slowly.