When the Epic Games Store launched in December 2018, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney spoke about possibly bringing it to mobile devices. Granted, that was the plan for 2019, which has already passed. Regardless, Sweeney is still interested in launching the storefront for mobile devices.
Speaking to GameSpot during its Play For All event, Sweeney said, “We’d like to bring the [Epic Games] Store to iOS in the future, and we will bring it to Android. We think it’s a good way to help the industry [move] forward and it’s another way where Epic as a game developer had built up this audience around Fortnite and learned how to operate a distribution platform on PC and Android.
“Now, as we’ve done with many things from the Unreal Engine to the Epic Online services, we open it up to all other developers to use with their games and are trying to serve the industry and provide a really interesting alternative to the ecosystem.”
Such a distribution platform would be interesting. Epic Games had previously fought to keep its greatest money-maker Fortnite from being available on the Google Play Store. Eventually it conceded and brought the battle royale title to the platform, making it available for a wider range of Android users
Both the Google Play Store and Apple Store are heavily entrenched so creating an alternative platform would require a lot of work. That didn’t stop Sweeney from pushing the Epic Games Store which crossed 100 million users as of January 2020 with third party developers making $251 million in profit. We’ll see what the future holds in the meantime.
