Epic vs. Apple Erupts Again as Brazil Opens Up the App Store
Apple opened iOS to alternative app stores and outside payment systems in Brazil on June 18, 2026, following a cease-and-desist agreement with CADE, Brazil's competition authority, that ended a three-year antitrust investigation. Epic Games immediately criticized the new terms as "anticompetitive," arguing Apple's fee structure, which charges commissions of up to 21% and a 5% fee even on purchases made entirely outside the App Store, is deliberately designed to discourage developers from actually using the new options rather than genuinely opening up competition.
A Long-Running Fight Lands on New Territory
This latest flashpoint is the newest chapter in a conflict that's been running since August 2020, when Epic deliberately triggered its own removal from the App Store by sneaking a hidden payment bypass into Fortnite, a calculated move internally codenamed "Project Liberty" designed specifically to force a legal confrontation with Apple over its App Store fees. That original US lawsuit dragged through years of litigation and appeals, and while Epic didn't win outright, a subsequent 2025 court ruling did strip away Apple's ability to charge additional fees on top of external web transactions in the US, a genuine, if partial, victory that Epic founder Tim Sweeney celebrated at the time by declaring "game over for the Apple Tax."
Brazil represents a new front in essentially the same fight, and the underlying dynamic is a familiar one at this point: a regulator forces Apple to open its platform, and Apple responds by restructuring its fees in a way that technically complies with the letter of the ruling while, according to critics, still making the "open" alternative economically unattractive enough that few developers or consumers actually use it.
What Apple's New Brazilian Terms Actually Require
The changes took effect with iOS 26.5, following Apple's cease-and-desist agreement with CADE last December, which closed out a three-year investigation into Apple's mandatory payment processing and anti-steering rules. CADE's own tribunal had previously described Apple's structure as a "closed and vertically integrated ecosystem" that locked developers into the App Store and trapped consumers through switching costs, language that echoes almost exactly what regulators in the EU, Japan, and the US have separately concluded about Apple's platform over the past several years.
| Payment Method | Fee |
|---|---|
| Apple's in-app payment system (standard developers) | 21% commission + 5% processing fee |
| Apple's in-app payment system (Small Business Program) | 10% commission + 5% processing fee |
| Third-party in-app payment system | 10% to 21% commission |
| Link-out to external payment (first 7 days) | 15% commission |
| Purchases through third-party app stores | 5% Core Technology Commission |
Apple has framed this as a genuine expansion of consumer and developer choice, and in one narrow, technical sense, it is: developers can now, for the first time in Brazil, distribute apps through rival marketplaces and process payments without going through Apple's own system at all. Apple has publicly stated that every developer selling digital goods in Brazil will end up paying "the same or less" than under the platform's previous standard rate structure.
Why Does Epic Call This "Anticompetitive" If Apple Actually Opened Up the Platform?
Epic's objection centers on that 5% Core Technology Commission specifically, the fee Apple collects even on transactions that never touch Apple's own payment infrastructure at all. From Epic's perspective, a fee structured that way defeats the entire purpose of "opening" the platform, since it means Apple still profits from every digital transaction on iOS regardless of whether a developer uses Apple's own systems or goes fully independent. Epic's official statement was blunt about the comparison, calling Brazil's terms "the same anticompetitive policies" Apple has already been accused of using in Japan, and warning Brazilian consumers should expect a similarly cumbersome third-party app store installation process to the one Apple implemented there.
The Coalition for App Fairness, an industry group whose founding members include Epic, Spotify, Basecamp, and Proton, echoed that criticism directly, stating that Apple's new terms don't create a genuinely open and competitive app ecosystem, and that developers choosing alternative stores or payment methods are effectively penalized for doing so through high fees and burdensome tracking requirements.
Notarization: The Part That's Getting Less Attention
Beyond the fee structure itself, Apple's Brazilian rollout comes with a structural limitation that's arguably just as significant as the commission percentages. Users cannot download apps directly from the open web in Brazil the way they can in the EU under the Digital Markets Act; all alternative distribution has to route through an Apple-authorized marketplace. Every app distributed outside the traditional App Store still passes through Apple's own Notarization process, a combination of automated scanning and human review that Apple controls entirely.
That's a meaningfully different model than the EU's approach, and it's a deliberate one. Apple has repeatedly argued publicly that its Japan-style framework, which Brazil's new terms closely mirror, actually offers better terms for developers than what's required under the EU's Digital Markets Act, a claim critics like Epic have consistently rejected as marketing spin around what amounts to the same underlying fee structure dressed up differently by region.
The July 6 Deadline Developers Are Racing Against
There's a real, immediate consequence attached to all this that goes beyond the abstract fee debate: every Apple Developer Program member in Brazil is required to accept a revised license agreement by July 6, 2026. Developers who don't accept the new terms are locked out of the new distribution and payment options entirely, meaning they'd remain confined to Apple's traditional App Store structure regardless of whether they actually agree with how the new terms are set up.
That's a meaningful pressure point for smaller Brazilian developers specifically, who may not have the legal or financial resources to fully evaluate whether the new fee structure genuinely benefits them before a hard compliance deadline forces a decision either way.
What Happens Next: Epic Is Bringing Fortnite Back to iPhone in Brazil
Despite its public criticism of the new terms, Epic has confirmed it's moving "full speed ahead" to bring the Epic Games Store to iPhones in Brazil within the next few months. That's a genuinely significant real-world test case. It'll be the first practical stress test of whether Apple's marketplace authorization process, and the friction built into that Japan-style installation flow, actually stops rival stores from reaching meaningful scale, or whether determined, well-resourced players like Epic can absorb the associated costs and friction as simply the price of doing business on the platform.
There's also a regulatory backstop still sitting in the background of all this. If CADE ultimately concludes that Apple's fee structure defeats the actual purpose of the settlement it agreed to, a second round of enforcement action against Apple in Brazil becomes a realistic possibility, following a pattern that's already played out in both the US and Japan, where initial "compliance" moves by Apple triggered renewed regulatory and legal pushback once it became clear the practical effect fell short of what regulators originally intended.
Why This Matters Beyond Just Apple and Epic
This dispute is really a proxy fight over a much bigger question shaping how mobile platforms get regulated globally right now: what does "opening" a platform actually mean in practice, and how much can a gatekeeper still profit from transactions it doesn't directly process before that openness becomes functionally meaningless? Brazil is a genuinely significant market to be testing this in, not a minor regulatory afterthought. It represents one of the largest mobile gaming markets in Latin America, and how this specific standoff plays out is likely to influence how other countries in the region approach their own App Store regulation going forward, the same way the EU's Digital Markets Act and Japan's Mobile Software Competition Act have each shaped the conversation in their own regions over the past two years.