Tim Sweeney says that many of Epic's exclusive deals were not good investments. However, the free games program has been 'just magical'

Epic Games has been giving games away on the Epic Games Store ever since it launched in 2018. This is to entice Steam users to install the launcher by offering freebies such as Grand Theft Auto 5 or Civilization 6. Over 580 million games were claimed for free last year.

It is not cheap to give away half a billion game copies every year. Epic pays only a fraction of the list price for each game, but this adds up. We learned from documents that were released during Epic's legal battle with Apple that the company spent over $11.6 million on games for free in the first nine month of the program. Epic has been giving games away for six years.

In response to a press call earlier this week in which a question was asked about Epic's strategy for free games, Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic, said that the program has been "very economical", with the added bonus that the budget is going to game developers, a group whose success is in the interest of a game store, rather than Facebook or Google ads.

Sweeney said that giving away free games may seem counterintuitive, but companies do spend money on acquiring users. "For a quarter of what it costs to acquire new users through Facebook Ads or Google Search Ads we can pay a developer a lot of cash for the right to distribute the game to our users and we can bring new users to Epic Games Store at an affordable rate.

"You might think that giving away free games would hurt sales of paid games in the Epic Game Store. But developers who do this actually see a rise in the sale of those games, simply because their free game increases awareness. It's so great that developers often come to us when they are about to launch a game to work with us on a timed free release, just to increase user awareness. It's been a great thing. "It's by far the most cost-effective aspect of the Epic Games Store."

Epic's second big way to attract new Epic Games Store customers has been to sign exclusive deals with publishers such as Ubisoft. It hasn't been a popular strategy and it hasn't worked as well.

Sweeney said, "We spent a great deal of money on exclusives." "A few of these worked very well. The free games program was a great success.

In 2021, Epic was expected to lose $300 million from the exclusivity agreements made up until that time. Epic has slowed its pursuit of exclusivity deals but it hasn't abandoned the strategy.

Epic Games Store exclusivity is now extended to games that Epic funds through its publishing division, which it launched in 2020. The first Epic-published game to be released was Remedy’s Alan Wake 2. It hasn't yet made a profit.

Free games are a big hit. Our Epic Games Store Free Games list keeps track of all the games Epic has given away, both now and in the past.