While some people will have installed the Epic Games Store on their smartphone already, to really break through to the mainstream, Epic needs to provide a sweetener. And sweeteners don’t come in a more delicious form than free games.
Epic Plans to Give Away Free Mobile Games
Epic’s free games program, that has proved such a hit on PC, is coming to mobile too.
Epic launched the Epic Games Store on mobile in August. Up to now, it has only really offered the company’s own offerings of Fortnite, Fall Guys, and Rocket League. However, as revealed at Unreal Fest 2024, all of that is about to change. As first reported by mobilegamer.biz, Epic Games Store general manager Steve Allison announced on stage:
In the holiday season we’ll open up with our first third party applications. We probably expect somewhere between 10 and 50 of them to be ready, and the biggest thing is just going to be implementing a payment solution, so that may push some of these out into the subsequent months.
The free games program will launch in Q4 along with the third party apps showing up, and we’re going to have some awesome stuff for players that will also be awesome for developers, because it’ll help us scale really quickly.
So, by the end of this year, mobile gamers will be able to grab free games from the Epic Games Store, as long as they have the app installed on their phone.
To sweeten the deal 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 game on the Epic Games Store at the same time as on other mobile app stores.
This Is Designed to Hit Apple and Google Hard
If this move to give free games away feels generous, then you need to understand the background. Epic Games has been battling Apple and Google over their app stores and the fees associated with them for many years. And it was a battle to even get the Epic Games Store launched on Android and iOS.
Essentially, with the mobile version of the Epic Games Store, Epic is continuing to take the fight to what it sees as the big boys already active in the space. After all, the reason Epic started giving away free PC games regularly was to wrestle some of the market away from the juggernaut that is Steam. And it has successfully gained a foothold as a result.
