Doesn’t Epic charge a 5% royalty for any games developed on Unreal Engine regardless of where or how the money is collected or what app store it’s installed from? Why can’t Apple collect fees for any apps that are built on their software AND hardware?

> Doesn’t Epic charge a 5% royalty for any games developed on Unreal Engine regardless of where or how the money is collected or what app store it’s installed from?

"Royalty". It's common to charge a royalty when allowing someone to distribute your copyrighted property.

> Why can’t Apple collect fees for any apps that are built on their software AND hardware?

Because that's not a royalty - you aren't distributing Apple's copyrighted property when you send someone an iPhone application.[1]

When you send someone your game built on Unreal Engine, you are sending them Epic's copyrighted property.[2]

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[1] If people could side-load iPhone apps, that is. I don't believe that they can.

[2] If you sell someone code to your game and tell them to to download Unreal Engine, then compile and/or link it against Unreal Engine themselves, then sure, Epic won't get a dime. But your customer might still have to pay for that, depending on whether Epic makes single-user no-sale licenses free (I believe they do).