Saturday, October 5th 2024
Epic Games To Bring Free Game Giveaways to Mobile Store To Tempt Players Away from Google, Apple
The Epic Games free weekly game giveaways have been an easy way for PC gamers to pad out their game library with aging games and help Epic Games draw gamers to its store, which is commonly thought to be inferior to the likes of Steam due to a lack of features. Now Epic Games is bringing that same free game giveaway program to its mobile storefront for iOS (in the EU, at least) and Android.
Announced at a round table discussion at the Seattle Unreal Fest earlier this week, the free mobile game giveaway will launch in Q4, 2024, and the publisher will add third-party apps to its mobile store at the same time. Epic Games Store's general manager, Steve Allison, who announced the program, was pretty up-front about Epic's intentions with the game giveaway: "The free games program 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."
While many of the games featured in the Epic Games weekly free game giveaway have been obscure indie titles, there have been a fair few AAA standouts, like Control, Borderlands 3, and the Tomb Raider trilogy. While the free game giveaways are undoubtedly going to be an interesting addition for gamers, the introduction of third-party developers is arguably more important for the health of the Epic Games Store in the long run, especially if the store wants to be profitable. Epic's other announcements at the Unreal Fest this past week are also indicative of its future plans for the Epic Games Store, with new discount deals and Unreal Engine collaborations incentivizing developers to publish their games on the Epic Games Store first or at the same time as on other platforms.
Epic says it will have "between 10 and 50" third-party applications on its mobile store before the holiday season, although there are still some unfinished features, like payments systems, that may require some of these apps and games to be delayed. The Epic Games Store has faced a rather public uphill battle for profitability, with Epic having recently had to resort to laying off over 800 employees due to overspending. Epic isn't likely to have a much easier time launching a mobile storefront this late in the game, especially since that storefront is only available on iOS in the EU, leaving only Android for the US—the world's second-largest video game market and the country with the highest number of iPhone users.
Source:
Mobilegamer.biz
Announced at a round table discussion at the Seattle Unreal Fest earlier this week, the free mobile game giveaway will launch in Q4, 2024, and the publisher will add third-party apps to its mobile store at the same time. Epic Games Store's general manager, Steve Allison, who announced the program, was pretty up-front about Epic's intentions with the game giveaway: "The free games program 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."
Epic says it will have "between 10 and 50" third-party applications on its mobile store before the holiday season, although there are still some unfinished features, like payments systems, that may require some of these apps and games to be delayed. The Epic Games Store has faced a rather public uphill battle for profitability, with Epic having recently had to resort to laying off over 800 employees due to overspending. Epic isn't likely to have a much easier time launching a mobile storefront this late in the game, especially since that storefront is only available on iOS in the EU, leaving only Android for the US—the world's second-largest video game market and the country with the highest number of iPhone users.
58 Comments on Epic Games To Bring Free Game Giveaways to Mobile Store To Tempt Players Away from Google, Apple
And I see a lot of stuff "I would never buy an app for a phone lol" and my question is, why not? If it's good, why not? This goes for games too, we're expected to pay for games in all other formats buy buying a PHONE GAME for like €5? Over my desecrated corpse! Then complain about all the ads everywhere.
It's been five freaking years in the making, and not added till this day.
Second thing is that they need to enforce support on Devs for their game store pages. Devs often just put initial version for store page, then grab money from Epic's early access or exclusive deal and then go to Steam. Then only focus on supporting Steam store page. This needs to stop. You sell on three or four store fronts, you support and update them all. Easy as that.
Epic needs to stop forcing community and social garbage in their client. One of the things I liked in EGS client was that it was just a game client; no social stuff, memes, trolls, spoilers, rants, haters, and what not from glorified Steam Community Hubs or from internet in general.
Want to add it? Fine, make it optional to display in client settings.
trello.com/c/b05EceNi/23-support-for-upgrading-editions
Until EGS can match or offer a better platform/service then what steam offers. EGS will continue to languish in the shadows and lose money while steam continues to grow.
On one hand I grew up on consoles and PC gaming, so that is my baseline.
Additionally, gaming is a thing I feel like I have to dedicate time for. I don't feel like I can just flop on the couch and fire up a game on my phone, it needs to be in a designated "gaming space" which is either in front of the spare TV or in front of my PC. Otherwise too many distractions, ill defined start and stop times, etc.
Lastly gaming is the bulk of my TV time, so I really like to play either graphically impressive single player narrative games or couch-co-op games with the kids, neither of which I believe is conducive to playing on a mobile phone for short bursts of time.
That said, my phone is sort of "virgin territory" for a game store. On PC I've settled on Steam or bust. I don't really care what EGS does there, I'm not even looking at it at this point.
On the phone, I don't have the same kind of loyalty to the Play store. Unlike Steam, it really is "just a store" to me, so in theory I am open to alternatives. The issue as defined above is I just don't see a phone as a gaming device the way I do a console or PC.
If you're implying Brazilian market isn't large enough... you'd be dead wrong