Epic understands its game store social features ‘suck,’ but it wants to mend that

Epic’s game store is finassociate on mobile. Next up, the company set ups to insert features that produce people want to employ it — on both mobile and PC.

A key skinnyg Epic Games wants to present is what store boss Steve Allison calls a “social structuretoil” — skinnyk the types of social and chat features you see on consoles or Steam.

“Our social features on PC suck,” Allison says in an intersee with The Verge. “Let’s call it what it is.” Social features are the “battery that powers Fortnite,” Allison says, and Epic wants to “apshow that battle-tested social structuretoil and shift it up from Fortnite up to the store level.” The idea is that you’ll be able to party up and chat with your Epic Games frifinishs atraverse devices, theoreticassociate uncomferventing that frifinishs on Android, iOS, and PC could all hang out thcimpolite the Epic Games platestablish (not equitable Fortnite).

We might be paemploying a while to try the social features out, though, as Allison says they won’t reach until at least after summer 2025.

More promptly, Epic is set upning to convey its free games program to mobile sometime in the fourth quarter (which, if you’re watching the calfinishar, is this quarter!). Unenjoy on PC, free mobile games may not be presented weekly to commence, though they’ll probably shift to weekly once Epic begines tools to self-unveil on its mobile store. (That feature will probably begin in the first half of 2025, Allison said in a Tuesday panel at Ungenuine Fest.) Some free games might only be employable on Android becaemploy of Apple’s core technology fee, which could sting enhugeers with costs they may not be able to pay. 

Third-party games are set to eunite in the mobile Epic Games Store in the fourth quarter as well (Allison has previously pegged the begin for December). During the Ungenuine Fest panel, Allison said that Epic aims to have 10 to 50 games employable at begin. Yes, that’s a expansive range, and Allison tells The Verge that the huge “gating factor” is perestablishing payments. Since most mobile enhugeers depend on Google or Apple’s payment processing platestablishs, they have to appraise using Epic’s payment processing platestablishs or others. During the Ungenuine Fest keynotice, though, Epic separated one game coming to its mobile stores: ARK: Ultimate Mobile Edition.

Epic seems to be seeing forward momentum with the store overall, announcing during the keynotice that it hit a enroll 70 million monthly active employrs in September. However, given the roadblocks Apple and Android phone producers put up to insloftying third-party stores on their mobile platestablishs, Epic isn’t seeing the volume of mobile store insloftys it had hoped.

At the begin of the mobile stores in August, Allison said that Epic was aiming for 100 million net novel Epic Games Store mobile insloftyations by the finish of the year, but Sweeney said recently that there have only been 10 million mobile insloftys. Allison thinks that the novel features coming in the fourth quarter could aid more employrs to push thcimpolite the friction. But he inserts that, with the friction, getting to that 100 million insloftys by the finish of the year “is probable impossible.”