Epic Games, the developers behind hit titles like Fortnite, plans on instituting its popular free games program in its new mobile storefront.
The company released its store for PC games in 2018, featuring its own titles. To convince players to shop through its medium, the Epic Game Store began its free games program, in which it released a brand-new free title every week. Many of these free games were notably significant, including titles such as Grand Theft Auto V, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Star Wars Battlefront II, and a good deal more.
Although the practice of giving away games for free may seem counterintuitive, “companies spend money to acquire users into games for about a quarter of the price that it costs to acquire users through Facebook ads or Google Search Ads,” Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney explained in a press call with PC Gamer. “We can pay a game developer a lot of money for the right to distribute their game to our users, and we can bring in new users to the Epic Games Store at a very economical rate.”
In a roundtable following Tuesday’s Unreal Fest keynote, Epic Game Store general manager, Steve Allison, announced the company’s plan to open the holiday season (Q4) with its first third-party applications. “We probably expect somewhere between 10 and 50 of [the games] 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.” Allison continued by commenting on bringing the free games program to the mobile store.
“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.”
The mobile version of the Epic Games Store was launched in its primitive state across the globe on Android in August and on iOS just in the EU. It obviously featured titles like Fortnite, Fall Guys, and Rocket League Sideswipe. When it comes to third-party games, however, Allison declared that Ark: Ultimate Mobile Addition will be the first of many to come, and it is set to arrive sometime later this year.
The Epic Games Store is currently only available on mobile via Android, at least in the United States.