Third‑party spend stays weak

Mobile game makers are finding that traffic on new app stores is not turning into much spending, even as the broader business keeps growing. (sensortower.com) (newzoo.com) Sensor Tower said global in-app purchase revenue across iOS and Google Play reached $150 billion in 2024, up 13% year over year. Newzoo put 2025 mobile game revenue at about $103 billion and said mobile growth was slowing in mature markets. (sensortower.com) (newzoo.com) The gap is showing up most clearly in Europe, where Apple was required under the Digital Markets Act to allow third-party app stores on iPhones from March 2024. The European Commission said on April 23, 2025 that Apple’s terms still discouraged developers from using those channels. (digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu) (competition-cases.ec.europa.eu) Epic launched its mobile Epic Games Store on iPhones in the European Union and on Android worldwide in August 2024, then said in its 2025 year-in-review that 35% of player hours in third-party games came from titles using their own payment solutions for in-app purchases. Epic did not disclose mobile gross merchandise volume or third-party mobile in-app purchase totals in that report. (epicgames.com) (store.epicgames.com) Other stores have opened, but at small scale. AltStore PAL launched in the European Union in April 2024 with two apps, and Aptoide said its iOS game store fully opened to European Union users in February 2025 after a beta waitlist of 20,000 users. (rileytestut.com) (gamesindustry.biz) For free-to-play games, distribution only matters if players also buy virtual currency, battle passes, or other digital items after installing. Apple’s Core Technology Fee originally charged €0.50 for each first annual install above 1 million for developers using its European Union alternative terms, a structure critics said was hard on high-download, low-margin games. (developer.apple.com) (digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu) Apple changed its European Union rules again on June 26, 2025 after the Commission fined it €500 million in April 2025 over anti-steering rules. Apple said the new system would replace the Core Technology Fee with a Core Technology Commission by January 1, 2026 for European Union apps on its new business terms. (cnbc.com) (revenuecat.com) Studios have been building web shops as another route around app store fees. Appcharge said in 2024 that 72% of top-grossing mobile games already had their own web store, which lets publishers keep more of each sale but also forces them to handle payments, promotions, and user conversion themselves. (mobilegamer.biz) (techcrunch.com) Apple has argued that alternative marketplaces and payment systems create more privacy and security risks for users in the European Union. Epic and other critics have argued that Apple’s fees and installation flow still make rival stores too cumbersome to scale. (apple.com) (techcrunch.com) That leaves mobile publishers with a narrower takeaway than the early policy fight suggested: new storefront access has arrived, but the spending still mostly sits where it always did. (sensortower.com) (newzoo.com)