Having officially launched in 2018 as a direct response to Steam’s overwhelming dominance in the PC platform market, the Epic Games Store has employed a very aggressive strategy from the start. One of the key features that distinguishes this store is its consistent practice of giving away free games to its users.
In a recent interview, the company’s CEO, Tim Sweeney, discussed how this strategy has pretty much always been positive for the company, however, the same cannot be said for its exclusivity deals.
The Free Games on the Epic Games Store Are Still Incredible for the Company
Despite Steam still being the most widely used platform for PC games, the Epic Games Store aimed to shake things up and challenge Valve’s giant.
Since its launch in 2018, the store has pursued a user-first strategy, offering free games weekly to all its users, which they can keep permanently. Obviously, this comes at a significant cost to the company.
In a recent interview, Tim Sweeney discussed how the constant giveaway of games has been positive in terms of profitability.
the free games program has been just magical.
He explained that this strategy has been more cost-effective than funding advertising through more conventional channels like Facebook Ads or Google Ads, as it results in less financial loss while also encouraging players to stay on the platform once they redeem the games.
Tim Sweeney Admits That Game Exclusivity Hasn’t Always Been a Great Strategy
Another major feature of the Epic Games Store is that developers who choose to launch their titles on this platform receive much higher revenue shares compared to releasing their games on the competition.
This pro-user and pro-developer approach has helped the store grow significantly in recent years. However, it still has a long way to go to reach the level of popularity that Steam enjoys. Many users also complain that the interface is not as intuitive.
One benefit of this strategy is that many developers have been very pleased with having their titles featured on the platform for free, resulting in a significant boost in their game’s popularity.
A few of them worked extremely well. A lot of them were not good investments
In 2021, the company revealed that it had lost over $300 million just on exclusivity deals to have certain games available on the Epic Games Store for a limited time. Clearly, the competition over which platform is the most popular is fierce.
One of the most notable recent cases is Alan Wake 2, which, despite its launch on the store, has yet to achieve real profitability. As its exclusivity deal nears its end, we can expect the game to arrive at Steam soon.
Unfortunately, these kinds of statistics and data show that the platform is still not on par with Valve’s counterpart in terms of popularity.
What are your thoughts on Sweeney’s comments? Let us know in the comments!
