Epic will offer free games on the mobile Epic Store too

Epic has ambitious plans to also give out free smartphone games on the mobile version of the Epic Games Store.

The Epic Store's freebie program has done wonders to boost the storefront's user numbers, with MAUs jumping from 160 million in 2020 to a whopping 230 million in 2022. A good portion of that uptick is from users signing up to nab the free games that Epic routinely doles out on the service.

As it turns out, the freebies are also coming to Epic Games Store mobile, too. And with federal judge ruling that Google must now allow competing third-party storefronts right in the Google Play Store, Android gamers will be able to access these free mobile games once they are made available without having to do any extra steps.

At a roundtable panel at the Unreal Fest 2024 in Seattle, Epic Games Store general manager Steve Allison offered more details and timing for the program:

"Things like our free games program, we've always designed it from jump to be like...hey, we're going to offer games that...some of them have sold great, and they're really great for user acquisition, but we also want players to discover games they might have missed from developers that are awesome and become fans of those developers.

"Bringing that program to mobile, I think is going to be super cool and really benefit people who are making mobile content.

"The free games program will launch in Q4 along with third-party apps showing up. We're going to have some awesome stuff for players that will also be awesome for developers because it will help us scale really quickly.

"Then self-publishing tools, which means that 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."