Newsletter
In a surprising turn of events for Epic this week, it has announced that the Epic Games Store will be coming to Android. An official store for games on mobile devices that’s run by Epic, and in direct competition with games on Google Play.
For Epic (and developers by the sounds of it), this is a big deal. Epic teased the coming of the Epic Games Store on Android via a post on X as part of its GDC announcements this week. It also gave further details about what this means for devs and players. In short, it should be a good thing. Epic says that it will offer the “same fair terms” to developers on Android as it does on PC. That means it will split the revenue the same way for those who choose to publish their games on the Epic Games Store.
That revenue split amounts to 88% of the revenue for developers while Epic only gets a 12% cut. However, Epic will also offer the same tools as EGS on PC that devs can use to keep 100% of the revenue. This would include developers needing to use their own payments for in-game purchases though. Even for those that aren’t set up to do that, 88% of the revenue is a lot more than what Google offers. Nearly 20% more.
Epic doesn’t give any details as to the exact launch date of its mobile game store. But it’s still kind of early in the year. So there’s plenty of time for it to get things polished.
The Epic Games Store will come to iOS in addition to Android
Gamers on Android won’t be the only ones to benefit from this announcement. Epic confirms that EGS will be headed to iOS as well. This will be a little bit more of a big deal for iOS users. Because those on iOS have been without a way to play Fortnite natively on the device since Apple removed it from the store. Apple’s reasonings were of course due to Epic violating Apple’s Store policies. But the fact remains that it resulted in players on iOS being left out. At least until GeForce NOW came to iOS.
Even still, this only allowed players to boot up the PC version of Fortnite via the cloud. With the Epic Games Store coming to iOS, there will be a native way for players to grab the game. That being said, it’ll be interesting to see how this shakes out. Epic has been in court battles with both Google and Apple over the way they handle payments and licensing fees. With Epic claiming that both companies unfairly monopolize the market and leave little to no room for competition. This should change that some.