Earlier this year, Epic announced the launch of the Epic Games Store on mobile, circumventing the Google Play and App Store for iOS. Convincing people to avoid the stores they’ve been visiting is a Herculean task, one that can only apparently be helped by bringing Epic’s free games program to the platform to entice new users.
Yup. At Seattle’s Unreal Fest, Epic Games Store general manager Steve Allison announced plans to add 10-50 third-party titles to the mobile app that were previously playable on desktop. Games, incidentally, that won’t be accessible through the more typical stores on Apple and Google’s front.
En Epic Disruption
You’ll need to wait for those free and third-party games to hit the store, though. “The free games program will launch in Q4 along with the third-party apps showing up, and we’re gonna have some awesome stuff for players that will also be awesome for developers because it’ll help us scale really quickly,” said Allison. And it’s starting with Ark: Ultimate Mobile Edition, the first third-party addition set to drop in Q4 of this year.
It’s not entirely clear if the games will be eventually added to third-party app stores later down the line, but chances don’t seem likely if this run turns out to actually be successful.
As for the free games program, there’s no word on which games Epic will so kindly give way to customers when it arrives later this year. If you’re unfamiliar with the program on desktop that launched at the height of the Covid pandemic, it makes certain games free to play for about a week, during which users can add them to their library and keep forever.
The video game developer and publisher isn’t stopping there. On top of announcing 10-50 third-party titles, it’s developing features to help mobile developers host their apps on the Epic Games Store, without much help from Epic’s side. Apps that require the implementation of a payment solution, however, might be held off a little longer. There are also plans to add social features like in-game chat and cross-platform play eventually.
“When all those three things come together,” Allison said, “we’re off to the races.”