Epic Games Store Coming to iOS and Android This Year

At GDC 2024, Epic Games confirmed that the Epic Games Store will launch on iOS and Android later this year. It will be the first game-focused, multi-platform store across mobile, PC and macOS. New features for Unreal Engine 5 were also unveiled, as well as new opportunities for creators and new games.

Epic Games announced at GDC 2024 (State of Unreal) that the Epic Games Store will launch on mobile devices later this year. The store will be the first ever game-focused multi-platform store across Android, iOS, PC and macOS. "Mobile developers will benefit from the same fair terms on EGS for PC: 88/12 revenue share and the same programs you can leverage to keep 100% of revenue using your own payments for in-app purchases, Epic First Run, and Now On Epic", the company says. Interestingly, Epic Games is not limiting this announcement to the European market. This follows a long-running legal dispute between Epic Games and Apple, which was settled in recent weeks at the insistence of the European Union under the Digital Markets Act (DMA).

The company also demonstrated Unreal Engine 5.4 Preview 1 with nanite tessellation and volumetric rendering, using "Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra" as an example. The game, from writer/director Amy Hennig and her team at Skydance New Media, showed off its new ensemble adventure at State of Unreal. Epic Games: "Animation is a major focus of 5.4, which introduces Motion Matching, a simple and efficient way to animate characters in games. Later this year we will also release a free sample learning project that includes over 500 AAA animations created from high-end motion capture data with the locomotion and traversal dataset used in the keynote demo." The fully-in-engine procedural content generation framework has also been enhanced.

Additionally, creators using UEFN (Unreal Editor for Fortnite) can now create and animate MetaHumans as non-playable characters for their Fortnite islands using MetaHuman Creator and MetaHuman Animator. Epic Games is also making more game IP widely available to Fortnite Creators. Creators can now use new creative devices and track templates to build Rocket Racing islands in Fortnite, and LEGO Elements and LEGO Styles are coming to Fortnite Creative and UEFN. Epic Games: "We've always used our own first-party games to push Unreal Engine development forward and ensure it's battle-tested for creators. It's time for Fortnite development to move to UEFN and Verse. By the end of 2025, we will ship our first season of Battle Royale developed entirely in UEFN."

Other games on show included Funcom's "Dune: Awakening", which Nukklear and Yager are also working on. Natural Motion gave a sneak peek at "Star Wars: Hunters" and Chrono Studio showed a new trailer for their MMORPG "Chrono Odyssey", which will be published worldwide by Kakao Games. It will be released on PC via the Epic Games Store and on consoles.

Never miss anything from the German, Swiss and Austrian games industry again: subscribe for free to our Daily newsletter and get all news straight to your inbox.