MOBILE games are a great way to play on the go, but the free-to-play titles can end up being more expensive than full-price ones.

These games usually have either annoying adverts that interrupt your gameplay, expensive microtransactions to play, or both.

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There has been a change in the mobile gaming industry, with new services popping up that promise you free-to-play, ad-free, microtransaction-free games.

Netflix and Crunchyroll both offer free mobile games as part of their entertainment subscriptions, and Apple Arcade gives iPhone users access to quality games.

Epic Games recently announced that it would be joining these other services in offering a strong library of games to mobile players.

Starting near the end of 2024, Epic has promised to strengthen its services with a ‘free games’ programme for mobile users.

Epic hopes that this mobile games programme will encourage people to download the PC launcher and purchase games from there.

Epic Games Store general manager Steve Allison says that up to 50 third-party games will arrive on Epic’s mobile platform in 2024.

Allison said: “In the holiday season we’ll open up with our first third party applications.

“We probably expect somewhere between 10 and 50 of them to be ready, and the biggest thing is just going to be implementing a payment solution.

“So that may push some of these out into the subsequent months.”

Epic also hopes to add social features and self-publishing tools to the mobile app, to give even more ways to add to the gameplay.

Allison says: “There [will be] self publishing tools, which means developers can come in without any interactions with us, like they do on PC today.

“This is probably in the first half of the year, hopefully as close to January as possible.”

The first game that has been officially announced for the mobile platform is Ark: Ultimate Mobile Edition, a version of the popular survival-crafting game.

Epic also announced a new ‘Launch Everywhere with Epic’ programme which will help developers save on costs.

Developers who use the Unreal Engine to make their games will have a reduced cost if they launch their games on Epic.

Through the programme, the games can still be launched on multiple platforms as long, as they are available on Epic Games Store on launch day.

If you want to read more about mobile games, check out how Palworld is going mobile.

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