Epic Games is famous for several things: it’s the company that gave game developer its Unreal Engine and the owner of the self-titled digital distribution platform, Epic Games Store (EGS). Now, rumour has it that the software developer is planning on bringing the latter straight into both the Android and iOS ecosystem.
Revelation of Epic Games intention was first revealed in an interview with Gamespot, where Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games. Sweeney’s move has been viewed a second and more significant attack at Google and the 30% sales cut it takes from all developers.
It’s a bit of an irony, considering that Sweeney finally relented and released its popular battle royale title, Fortnite, on the Android-based app market. A year and a half after it said that it wouldn’t fall in line. Moreover, it can be argued that that same irony is compounded by the developer’s willingness to pay Apple’s sales tax to make it available for iOS via the App store.
At this point, we can see EGS may ultimately make its way as a stand-alone platform on the Android ecosystem, but how it plans to be independent on the iOS does draw a great deal of scepticism; Apple outright prohibits any app store other than its own on the iOS, let alone the installation of third-party apps not officially listed on the App store.
