While some people may already have the Epic Games Store installed on their smartphone, to really go mainstream, Epic needed to provide a sweetener. And sweeteners don’t come in a more delicious form than free games.
Epic plans to offer free mobile games
Epic’s free games program, which has proven to be such a hit on PC, is coming to mobile as well.
Epic launched the Epic Games Store on mobile in August. So far, it has only really offered the company’s own Fortnite, Fall Guys, and Rocket League. However, as revealed at Unreal Fest 2024, that’s all about to change. As first reported by mobilegamer.biz, Epic Games Store General Manager Steve Allison made the announcement on stage.
We’ll open up with our first third-party application for the holiday season. We expect to have probably between 10 and 50 ready, and on top of that, the payment solution is being implemented, so some of these could be rolled out in the next months.
The free games program will launch in Q4, with third-party apps appearing as well, and we’ll have some great things for players that will be great for developers as well, because that will help us grow much faster.
So, by the end of this year, mobile gamers will be able to get free games from the Epic Games Store, provided they have the app installed on their phone.
To sweeten the deal even more for developers, Epic is launching “Launch Everywhere with Epic,” which reduces Unreal Engine royalties from 5% to 3.5% for those willing to release their games on the Epic Games Store, along with other mobile app stores.
This is designed to give a tough competition to Apple and Google
If this move to give away free games sounds generous, you need to understand its background. Epic Games has been fighting Apple and Google over their app stores and the fees associated with them for several years now. And it was also a battle to launch the Epic Games Store on Android and iOS.
Essentially, with the mobile version of the Epic Games Store, Epic is continuing the fight against the big players who are already active in the space. After all, the reason Epic started giving away free PC games on a regular basis was to take some market share away from Steam. And it has successfully gained a foothold as a result.
