Epic v. Apple is shining a light on Apple's anti-steering rules, which prevent developers from pointing users to better deals on their website or elsewhere
Would ending anti-steering rules fix the App Store? — Last week, the judge in Epic v. Apple asked whether Epic really had an antitrust case …
Context & Ripple Effects
At the time of this piece, the trial was still live and the judge was openly questioning whether Epic had a viable antitrust case at all — anti-steering, not the 30% commission itself, looked like Epic's strongest surviving angle. That proved prescient: Apple ultimately won the broader contest but lost on steering, and the court-ordered changes kept coming anyway.
The arc since then runs through three checkpoints: Apple's nominal victory in 2021 that commentary still read as incomplete for developers; SCOTUS declining to hear either side's appeals in January 2024, letting the steering ruling take effect; and Apple's response — a 27% fee on out-of-store purchases framed by Phil Schiller as good-faith compliance — followed by an attempt to get that same injunction thrown out or narrowed. The story of anti-steering is now less about whether users can be steered than about what Apple may charge for letting them.
First-order effects
- Developers gain the immediate right (per the SCOTUS-effective ruling) to direct users to their own websites or external payment systems instead of being locked into in-app purchase — the exact prohibition this trial exposed.
- Apple must operationalize external purchases inside iOS, which is why Schiller was later defending the 27% fee as its compliance mechanism before a judge.
Second-order effects
- Apple converts a lost rule into a toll: charging a commission even on purchases it doesn't process keeps revenue flowing while daring developers and regulators to litigate the fee itself.
- Apple's October 2024 request to throw out or narrow the injunction shows the company treating the court order as negotiable — forcing Epic, developers, and the judge back into the courtroom rather than accepting the remedy as settled.
Third-order effects
- If injunction-narrowing succeeds, the template becomes clear: gatekeepers can lose a specific rule yet preserve the underlying economics through compliance fees and legal attrition, shifting the battleground from market access to take-rate design — the domain of regulated-platform economics rather than simple prohibition.
- The pattern points toward steering rights becoming table stakes across platforms, with the durable question being whether courts regulate the price of exit or leave it to each gatekeeper to set.
The trend: App Store gatekeeping is moving from closed rules to contestable ones — steering wins are real, but the fight is migrating from whether developers can route around the store to what the gatekeeper may charge them for doing so.