Epic unveils bold plan to pay penalties levied by Apple to tempt developers onto its mobile store"It's uneconomical and will cause us to lose a lot of money, [but] we feel like we have to break the logjam." News by Tom Phillips Editor-in-Chief Published on Jan. 23, 2025 Epic Games has announced a fresh push to convince app developers to launch their games on the company's fledgling mobile store, which company boss Tim Sweeney has admitted will be costly.The Epic Games Store for mobile will today add its first swathe of third-party games, beyond the company's core offering of Fortnite, Fall Guys and Rocket League Sideswipe.19 titles have made today's line-up on Android - including Bloons TD 6 and Dungeon of the Endless: Apogee, which are the first titles to be offered in the store's previously-confirmed free games program. 16 of these will also be available via the Epic Games Store on iOS, where it is offered within the European Union. More will be added weekly, typically on Tuesdays.Initially, Epic Games will offer free titles on a monthly basis, with its initial duo available until 20th February. A weekly schedule of free games will then kick in later this year. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Nintendo Switch 2 and Mario Kart 9 have been revealed - but questions remain.Watch on YouTubeEpic Games has clearly found it difficult to tempt mobile developers to its storefront, which was originally set to welcome third-party games last year and reach 100m installs by the end of 2024 - something it fell short of, only reaching around 30m instead. The company admits that none of the 100 highest-grossing app developers are yet willing to also distribute their game on the storefront - something it blames on Apple's controversial Core Technology Fee (CTF) policy.Epic to pay developers to counter Apple's "insidious design"What is the CTF policy? In a nutshell, iOS developers who want to launch games outside Apple's official App Store must pay a 0.50 fee for every install of its games - even via the App Store itself - after the company's first 1m installs. It's a policy Epic Games and others have criticised as prohibitive of any real competition for the App Store, as no major app developer will want to penalise itself for launching elsewhere.Today, Epic Games has announced it will cover the CTF for games that are offered as part of its store's free games program, for the program's first 12 months. "It's uneconomical and will cause us to lose a lot of money, [but] we feel like we have to break the logjam there," Epic Games boss Tim Sweeney said in a roundtable interview attended by Eurogamer. "[The CTF] is an absolutely insidious design, deviously constructed and deviously defended, and its the most critical thing the European regulators will need to overturn.""We might run into serious financial problems after a couple more decades of this"Asked whether Epic Games had the financial clout to continue the fight long-term, Sweeney said the company was in it for the long-haul."We might run into serious financial problems after a couple more decades of this, but we're determined to fight this out," he said. "I expect large parts of this struggle will go on over the rest of decade, and we're fully committed to it and breaking through. "The word for spending more money than you're making intentionally when you have a great business underneath is investment, and that's is what we see this as. It's an investment in Epic's future, both our future developer as a game developer ourselves - we see a much greater opportunity for Fortnite's future if iOS is open, and competition is allowed on iOS and Android, but we also see opportunities for all developers, and because we have businesses serving all developers such as Unreal Engine and Epic Games Store and our online services."Apple and Google's "paywall" sees money going to "fuck all"Either you have an ability to freely do business using fair market policies, or you're stuck behind Apple and Google's "paywall", Sweeney continued."Most of the profit your business produces will go to Apple and Google, who'll use it for fuck all - share buybacks and dividends rather than investment in hiring or technology or making the world a better place."This includes Fortnite's big rival Roblox, which pays huge amounts to Apple and Google - something Sweeney says was "frustrating" and "sad" to see. In response to a question from Eurogamer on Epic Game Store's 30m installs to date, Sweeney said the company could have hit its 100m target if Apple and Google's "friction" had not gotten in the way."We could have had 60m users, we were denied that, and we're pissed""30m installs would obviously have been 60m if 50 percent of users hadn't been scared away by the scare screens and friction that Apple and Google uses," Sweeney said. "We could have had 60m users, we were denied that, and we're pissed. "But it's not just 60m, because there are network effects. If a number of users are in an ecosystem there's incentive for their friends to come in and interact with their friends. If we'd have 60m users come in instead of 30, each of those would have brought friends, and if those friends hadn't dropped off at a 50 percent rate due to the scare screens, then we might have 100m. I think it would have been easy for us to get to 100m users.""Apple and Google are making this really hard," Epic Game Store boss Steve Allison added. "We had a goal of 100m installs of our first version of the store - with our first-party games - by the end of [last] year. We knew that was going to be a challenge, and where we ended up was around 30m. The friction is real and that number confirms that, absent this friction, we would have hit 100m by the end of the year."The Core Technology Fees on the iOS side and the rate of drop off on installs for the store are issues for some of these companies and they have got to get better before we get them to join," Allison continued. "But regardless, many of them will join us and some will wait before we make progress in these areas, and we're working really hard to do that."Allison said Epic Games is not yet ready to share its new targets, but wanted to see the results of the free games program before discussing more. CMA investigationThe timing of today's announcement is interesting, coming hot on the heels of this morning's confirmation by the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) that it is launching a fresh investigation into Apple and Google using last year's Digital Markets, Competition and Consumer Act. Epic Games first launched the mobile version of its store last year, as the latest salvo in its long-running battle against Apple and Google which it says hold an unfair monopoly over the distribution of apps and games within their own ecosystems. The CMA will now investigate whether either Apple or Google should be labelled as having Strategic Market Status, a designation that would allow the authority to "guide the behaviour" of each firm, "tackling conduct that could undermine fair competition, or exploit people and businesses".Lastly, today also brings a couple of new features to the Epic Games Store on mobile, including Epic Account login and an auto-update feature.