Epic’s mobile Games Store: up to 50 titles by Q4, free games program, lower fees for Unreal devs, more

Epic has fleshed out its Games Store pitch to mobile developers a little, promising reduced commission for Unreal devs, a free games program, self-publishing tools, social features and up to 50 live third party games by the end of the year.

There was also the obligatory smack talk from Tim Sweeney at the Unreal Fest event in Seattle, as the Epic CEO continued his fierce criticism of Apple and Google.

In a roundtable after the keynote, Epic Games Store general manager Steve Allison said that up to 50 third party games could arrive on its mobile Games Store by Q4. Epic’s ‘free games’ program, a major user acquisition tool for its PC store, is also coming to mobile, he said, with self-publishing tools and social features also on the way.

Ark: Ultimate Mobile Edition was also revealed as the one of the first third party titles coming to the mobile Epic Games Store. It’ll launch there later this year.

The Fortnite maker also announced a new ‘launch everywhere with Epic’ program. It’ll now take a reduced 3.5% royalty for Unreal Engine games launching on Epic Games Store before or at the same time as other stores and platforms.

It is temporarily waiving the requirement to ship on iOS because of Apple’s “commercially prohibitive” Core Technology Fee, but if this changes, Epic said it will give devs at least four months’ notice.

Here’s what Epic Games Store general manager Steve Allison said about the mobile Games Store in a roundtable following yesterday’s Unreal Fest keynote:

“In the holiday season we’ll open up with our first third party applications,” he said. “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 gonna have some awesome stuff for players that will also be awesome for developers, because it’ll help us scale really quickly.”

“And then there’s self publishing tools, which means developers can come in without any interactions with us, like they do on PC today, probably in the first half of the year, hopefully as close to January as possible.”

Epic is also working on enabling social and party features through its store, like in-game chat and cross-platform play, that could roll out “a little bit later in the year,” said Allison. “When all those three things come together, we’re off to the races.”

And of course, Tim Sweeney took the opportunity to criticise old foes Apple and Google during the event. “Apple and Google have a totally broken vision for the world, which is to limit what developers can do, to impose ever more restrictions, to prevent things like the metaverse from happening, or to tax it to the point where they’re extracting all the profit from it,” he said during the keynote.

“And we’re at a point now where game development is expensive. It’s low margin, and game companies are suffering. Apple and Google make way more profit for most games than the developers make themselves, while contributing nothing back. This has to change.”

Sweeney later promised that Epic will continue to fight Apple and Google to open up their platforms “until there’s an ultimate victory”.

Later, in a roundtable about mobile app stores, Sweeney continued his fierce criticism of the tech giants while also referring to Epic’s latest lawsuit. “Google nominally allows competing stores on Android, but Google is much more insidious than Apple,” he said. “At least Apple tells you – it’s written in the rules: ‘you’re not allowed to compete with us’. Google says you are and then does all kinds of crooked things to block you.”

He later accused Apple and Google of ‘just ignoring the law’ and ‘interpreting the law in completely disingenuous ways’.

“Apple and Google’s scare screens and bad practices and attempts to attach junk fees to things just make it really, really hard for competition,” he added. “But yeah, this is what we’re fighting over, and it’s what we’re fighting for, and we’ll keep fighting on until it’s solved.”