Epic is continuing its free games gamble with its mobile store, alongside a promise to have up to 50 apps available this "holiday season"
We'll have to wait and see if it pulls it off.
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Epic Games is still working on its own mobile storefront, and whenever it does launch, it'll be continuing its free games program there too.
Since 2018, Fortnite developer Epic Games has run its own digital storefront for PC games, though there's definitely been some bumps on the way. It arrived without some key features, including what you'd think are simple things like wishlisting, but it's generally in a functional state these days. Over the years, though, in an effort to entice more players over to its side of the pond, Epic has been giving away a new free game every week, occasionally giving away some pretty big titles. And now, as reported by mobilegamer.biz, Epic looks to be trying that once more with its mobile storefront.
While speaking at a round table during this week's Unreal Fest, Epic Games Store general manager Steve Allison explained, "The free games programme will launch in Q4 along with the [first] 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." Apparently Epic expects to have "between 10 and 50" third-party apps ready by this "holiday season" (that's quite the uncertain range you've got there, Epic).
Allison also explains that that range comes from the fact that there's still the issue of "implementing a payment solution, so that may push some of these out into the subsequent months," which feels like a bit of a last minute thing to need doing, but hey ho.
Back in August, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney said that the free games have actually been working out great, even if not all of them were "good investments", so we'll have to see if its mobile store will be a good investment or not.
Last month, Epic laid off about 900 of its employees, which is around 16% of its staff, coming only days after Fortnite had its sixth anniversary (and soon after the price of V-Bucks went up).