Epic has unveiled further insights into its strategy to entice developers to its newly launched mobile store. The company aims to attract more mobile game developers through self-publishing tools, a free games initiative, and reduced commission rates for studios utilizing the Unreal Engine for their game development.
"In the holiday season, we’ll kick off with our initial third-party applications," stated Epic Games Store general manager Steve Allison following the Unreal Fest Seattle event (as reported by Mobile Gamer Biz). "We anticipate somewhere between 10 and 50 of these to be ready, with the primary challenge being the implementation of a payment solution, which might delay some of these launches into subsequent months."
Allison further mentioned that Epic intends to roll out a free mobile games program by year-end to bolster the storefront, alongside social features, cross-platform play, and other "awesome stuff" for both users and developers. "The free games program will debut in Q4 along with the third-party apps, and we’ll have some fantastic features for players that will also benefit developers, helping us scale rapidly," Allison elaborated.
Epic currently provides free games weekly through the Epic Games Store, a service it has been operating for several years. The company has also frequently expressed its disapproval of Google and Apple, criticizing their business practices. Epic's plans to establish and release its own app store on iOS, thereby bypassing Apple's 30% platform fee, were postponed after Apple revoked its developer account, but the company re-emerged in Europe in August.
Leveraging European Union regulations and the new Digital Markets Act, Epic successfully launched its app on iPhones in the European Union and on Android devices globally.
