In a call to the press primarily about Epic's continual grievances about Apple needing to be forced to allow Epic's independent game store on iOS as well as Fortnite, Epic CEO, Tim Sweeney briefly addressed what has and has not been successful in driving users to create EGS accounts and his answer is unsurprising. Sweeney admitted that their strategy of trying to sign timed exclusivity deals was less effective than giving away games for free. Last year, the Epic Game Store processed the redemption of 580 million free games. On the other hand, many of you are also aware of PC game titles both big and small that no longer are purchasable on Steam or GOG and are only available on Epic, the most notable example being Alan Wake II, a game that Remedy has later admitted has not generated a profit. With the CEO admitting that these timed exclusivity deals are not moving the needle as much as they would like, I wonder if we will see less of that in the future.

Now, it has been a running storyline that Epic still does not make money by running EGS and the digital marketplace is in fact a huge loss leader for the company. Late last year, Forbes verified that in the five years that the Epic Games Store has been operating, it has always operated at a loss. Prior to that, The Verge did a report in Spring of 2023 about how exactly Epic goes about selecting and paying for all of the games it provides for free. In that report by Verge, Epic admits to spending millions of dollars to keep the program rolling.

Sweeney did provide context on why the cost of Epic's free games program isn't a cause for concern. In the disclosure he had with the press recently, he stated:

"Giving away free games seems counterintuitive as a strategy, but companies spend money to acquire users into games," said Sweeney. "For about a quarter of the price that it costs to acquire users through Facebook ads or Google Search Ads, we can pay a game developer a lot of money for the right to distribute their game to our users, and we can bring in new users to the Epic Games Store at a very economical rate.

"And you might think that this would hurt the sales prospects of games on the Epic Game Store, but developers who give away free games actually see an upsurge in the sale of their paid games on the store, just because their free game raises awareness. And it's so much that often developers, when they're about to launch a new game, come with us wanting to work closely on a timed release of a free game, just to drive user awareness of their next game. That's been an awesome thing. And it's been by far the most cost effective aspect of the Epic Games Store."

It is important to note that Tim Sweeney has been full of shit before. My absolute favorite example dates back to 2008 when Sweeney was hyping up the release of Gears of War 2 and posited that Intel's discrete graphics systems would mark the death of the GPU. So, of course the man is saying everything is fine. He might understand games and the tech industry, but he's been in the corpo circles long enough that you have to take everything he says with a grain of salt. That said, while Epic definitely is not hurting financially thanks to the growing use of Unreal Engine 5, you do have to wonder what the long-term goal is for EGS.

The Epic Game Store is fighting against a superior product that is already entrenched in Steam. It really doesn't provide a compelling reason to use it beyond free games so of course that's why people use it. Add in the fear that it might go away some day and people just don't want to invest in a new ecosystem when they can get the same games for the same price (or cheaper) on Steam.

The EGS is a prime example of something where EPIC has a compelling reason for it to exist, but customers don't. At least with GOG it started out offering games Steam wasn't selling.

I respect the free games but exlusive for epic i dont like and that is one of the reasons why i dont use it

It was the only reason I used it, until last holiday season, where Alan Wake II and Mortal 1 Kombat were on sale. I got those games and haven't regretted my purchase. In fact, I'll soon be getting the Night Springs DLC in the future. I'm not one of those Steam only types. Yes, like many others, I'm used to using Valve's app, but if I can get and play games on another gaming app for a good price or free, I'm all for it. I don't have an issue navigating and finding the games I want to play in the Epic Store, like others seem to have.

To date I've made 4 purchases on the Epic games store - Satisfactory, Hades, Ashen, and the FFVII Remake.

I have since purchased those games on steam and closed my Epic account.

My time with the EGS was miserable - the launcher wouldn't launch the game 30% of the time (seemed like 50%, and seemed worse with Unreal Engine games, ironically), it never once remembered my password despite checking the 'remember password box' every login, the download speed was atrocious, and specifically I was unable to play FFVIIR as a Steam shortcut (once the game launched, I was prompted not to open it using 3rd party launchers, so they really had to put in the work for that one). The final nail in the coffin was getting a steam deck; I don't have the time or inclination to eff around with third party launchers on a device that natively plays my steam games and keeps my save files juggled between devices almost completely hassle-free.

I would've loved to have played Alan Wake II - I'm not a huge fan of the first or anything, but I think Remedy is a cool studio and Quantum Break was pulpy fun. But there are other games to play, and I can play them with less hoops. And I don't think I'm alone in that.

For those of you that benefit from the free games, especially those in countries where economic realities would otherwise prohibit you from owning those games, I'm sincerely happy for you - that's great. I genuinely, honestly feel that way. Nobody owes any allegiance to a corporation, under any circumstances whatsoever. I benefit from Steam, you benefit from the EGS, everyone wins.

But for me the EGS was a broken mess. It had one primary function - launch the game. And it didn't even handle that with any sort of regularity. I recognize that mine is probably a hedge case; I'm sure for most people it runs fine and it's just a weird quirk of my hardware or OS or whatever. And the feature-set of Steam is nice but not wholly necessary (community guides in game, full-on controller remapping, native mod support, being able to change the library art, VR, Steam Deck).

Whatever. Just launch the game!... No?! Just going to sit there? Try again?! Third time's the charm?! Fourth?!!!

I hope these free users get better than what I paid for.

I think I have actually bought one thing from the Epic store and the rest have either been free offerings from them or via Twitch Prime membership offers. The game I bought was the early access version of Rogue Legacy 2 that I played quite a bit of, but really put most of my hours into the Xbox version of it when it came out there. Vast majority of my playing time is on console, but I still like to claim these freebies when they're offering just in case I get the itch to dabble in PC stuff down the line. I literally got a Steam Deck OLED this month and have pretty much only been playing around with emulation and earning Retro Achievements. Haven't had a chance to do much else.