LogIn"But the free games program has been just magical."
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Where do you buy video games for your PC? I'm sure most people would say Steam, and Epic Games knows it, too, so it has been trying to entice players with free games and exclusives – strategies that brought varying results.
The company's CEO Tim Sweeney revealed that its exclusive deals are not as successful as he wishes it to be.
"We spent a lot of money on exclusives," he said (via PC Gamer). "A few of them worked extremely well. A lot of them were not good investments, but the free games program has been just magical."
While still pursuing exclusives, Epic has slowed down in that area. Last year, the company admitted it was not making money from the platform.
Exclusivity also applies to the games Epic publishes, including Alan Wake 2, which is struggling to cover its development and marketing costs.
Despite losing money, free games keep the Store going, surprisingly.
"Giving away free games seems counterintuitive as a strategy, but companies spend money to acquire users into games," Sweeney said. "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.
He noted that developers who give away games "see an upsurge in the sale of their paid games on the store, just because their free game raises awareness." So they come to Epic to release a free game in order to bring attention to their other projects. "And it's been by far the most cost effective aspect of the Epic Games Store," Sweeney claimed.
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