Epic knows its game store communication features are ‘sucking,’ but it wants to fix that

Epic game store is finally available on mobile. Next, the company plans to add features that make people want to use it – on both mobiles again PC.

An important thing Epic Games wants to introduce is what store manager Steve Allison calls a “social framework” — think of the kinds of social features and chats you see on consoles or Steam.

“Our social aspects on PC are absorbing,” Allison said in an interview The Verge. “Let’s call it what it is.” Social factors are “the battery that powers it Fortnite,” Allison said, and Epic wants to “take that battle-tested community framework and take it Fortnite down to the store level.” The idea is that you’ll be able to party and chat with your Epic Games friends across devices, meaning friends on Android, iOS, and PC can all hang out on the Epic Games platform (not just Fortnite).

We may have to wait a little longer to try out the social features, though, as Allison says they won’t arrive until at least the summer of 2025.

Soon, Epic plans to bring its free-to-play games to mobile sometime in the fourth quarter (which, if you look at the calendar, is this quarter!). Unlike PC, free mobile games may not be offered weekly to begin with, although they may continue weekly when Epic introduced self-publishing tools to its mobile store. (That feature will likely launch in the first half of 2025, Allison said at a panel Tuesday at Unreal Fest.) Some free-to-play games may only be available on Android because of Apple’s technology capital, which could cost developers money they might not otherwise have. able to pay.

Third-party games will appear on the Epic Games Store mobile in the fourth quarter as well (Allison previously slated a December launch). During the Unreal Fest panel, Allison said Epic aims to have 10 to 50 games available at launch. Yes, that’s a wide range, and Allison tells it The Verge that a major “gating factor” is using fees. Since many mobile developers rely on Google or Apple payment processing platforms, they should test using Epic or other payment processing platforms. During the Unreal Fest keynote, however, Epic shared one game coming to its mobile stores: ARK: Ultimate Mobile Edition.

Epic seems to be seeing momentum with the store as a whole, announcing during a keynote that it hit a record 70 million active users in September. However, given the roadblocks Apple and Android phone makers are putting up to include third-party stores on their mobile platforms, Epic is not seeing the volume of mobile store installations it had hoped for.

At the launch of the mobile stores in August, Allison said that Epic was aiming for 100 million mobile installs of the new Epic Games Store by the end of the year, but Sweeney said recently that only 10 million mobile installs have been done. Allison believes that the new features coming in the fourth quarter could encourage more users to continue the conflict. But he added that, because of the conflict, reaching that 100 million deposit by the end of the year is “almost impossible.”