This is not out of the goodness of fruity cargo cult Apple’s heart. It is entirely down to  legal measures by the EU, which stopped it being such a Dickensian.

Fortnite, created by U.S.-based Epic Games and backed by China's Tencent, launched in 2017 and quickly became a sensation with its last-player-standing "battle royale" format, attracting millions of dedicated players.

However, in August 2020, Apple and Google removed Fortnite from their app stores for violating their guidelines by introducing a payment feature. This led to several lawsuits challenging their rules of charging up to 30 per cent commissions on payments. At the time of the ban, Epic had 116 million users on Apple's platform.

The EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA) is now allowing Epic to launch its game store in the bloc, though Apple is still blocking users outside Europe from accessing Fortnite and its game store, according to the company.

Epic CEO Tim Sweeney said: “We are really grateful to the European Commission for not only passing the DMA and enabling store competition, but also going in and robustly holding Apple and Google's feet to the fire to ensure that they can't just obstruct competition.”

"They were going to great efforts to slow us down, and tried to stop us several times, and the European Commission always stepped up and ensured that competitors were able to enter the market," he added.

The store is launching with Fortnite, Rocket League Sideswipe, and the all-new Fall Guys for mobile, and Epic is collaborating with other developers to launch their games and apps through its store. Epic, which has 75 million monthly active users in its PC store, expects to add 100 million new mobile users by the end of the year.

The games will also be available through independent mobile stores such as AltStore. However, Epic noted that the installation process on iOS devices is lengthy, involving a 15-step procedure, confusing device settings, and scare screens.

Apple stated that to enable the new capabilities for developers in the EU, it worked to make them as easy as possible for users while also trying to protect their privacy and security.

"We probably lost over a billion dollars of revenue by losing access to the iOS customer base worldwide for four years, but what's the cost of freedom?" Sweeney remarked.