Epic Store’s free games have resulted in those games selling better in the long run

I don’t know about you guys, but I absolutely love buying stuff when it’s sold at the low low price of nothing. Which is even better when I don’t have to apply a five-finger discount or make Brad wonder why I’m spending so much time in the bathroom while he picks up the bill at a food joint! Speaking of free stuff, Epic’s thriving game store has done pretty well on that front, offering not only regularly free downloads but an offer to actually grab good games for Gratis.

We’ve seen the likes of Borderlands: The Handsome Collection and Into the Breach offered as freebies with which to entice consumers towards the Epic Games Store lifestyle, and it looks like there’s no current end to this delicious bait being thrown into the gaming waters currently. Those free games have been fantastic marketing for the EGS, and according to Epic CEO Tim Sweeney, they’ve also been fantastic for driving home awareness of other games and increasing sales across long after the free giveaway promotion has ended.

“You’re not going to go out and buy if you’re not into games like Satisfactory, you’re not going to go out and spend money to buy Satisfactory but if you get it for free you realize it’s an awesome game,” Sweeney said to GameSpot.

People have discovered a lot of great games that way. It’s been a benefit for game developers. Most developers who launch their games for free on the store found that their sales on Steam and on console platforms actually increased after they went free on Epic because of increased awareness and so it’s been a really positive thing and it’s brought tens of millions of new users into the Epic Games ecosystem and that’s been a wonderful thing for the company.

The success of the Epic Games Store has now led the company to start pondering about a mobile version of their platform, one that will highlight the many many iOS and Android games that frequently fly under the radar on smartphone and tablet devices. “We’d like to bring the [Epic Games] Store to iOS in the future, and we will bring it to Android,” said Sweeney.

We think it’s a good way to help the industry [move] forward and it’s another way where Epic as a game developer had built up this audience around Fortnite and learned how to operate a distribution platform on PC and Android. Now, as we’ve done with many things from the Unreal Engine to the Epic Online services, we open it up to all other developers to use with their games and are trying to serve the industry and provide a really interesting alternative to the ecosystem.

If Epic Games popped up on mobile and offered the best of that platform at cutthroat prices while hyping up a great game as a biweekly freebie? I don’t think I’d complain. GO PLAY FLORENCE YOU MONSTERS!

 

Last Updated: June 3, 2020