Other issues have arisen over Epic’s plans for its mobile game suite, including its struggle to market up to 50 third-party titles and introduce its PC market gifting program through Life’s End.
MobileGamer.biz reported that Epic Games’ Bind manager Steve Allison shared the inside track with developers during a panel discussion at last-gen’s Unreal Fest 2024. He said he hopes between ten and 50 titles could be dropped into the mobile package. during leisure seasons, with Studio Wildcard’s Ark: Ultimate Mobile Edition visible as the first third-party game shown.
Allison also said an independent video game program will open this fall. As with the PC version of Epic Games Bind, this will occasionally switch to players preferring the games separately in hopes of achieving greater market adoption.
Desktop publishing teams are headed in the right direction for “probably the first half of the year, hopefully as close to January as possible,” according to the executive, and social and event features such as in-game chat and cross-functional . platform games – are also in the works.
“When those three things come together, we get to work,” Allison said.
In the last generation, Epic announced a discount on the royalty fee for Unreal Engine games that launch on Epic Games Bind before or in the same generation as alternative markets. The company already said this recently only applies to PC, Mac, and Android, and MobileGamer.biz is now reporting that Epic excluded iOS from being sued due to Apple’s “commercially prohibitive” core generation rate.
iOS support for the initiative has been planned for some time, and Epic has promised to give developers at least four months.
Epic Games Bind launched for mobile devices in August, and the company aims to achieve 100 installs on Android and iOS by the end of 2024. It recently did business in three of Epic’s own games: Fortnite, Rocket League Sideswipe and Fall Guys Cell unused.