The Epic Games Store Is Offering More Than Just Free Games
The Epic Games Store offers a lot of different things to attract customers. Establishing a firm place in the marketplace of PC games storefronts is not easy, especially not when Steam's dominance of the space is extremely strong. Valve's dominant position in the market is undeniable, but Epic Games hopes to eventually step up to the plate. To do so, Epic is employing numerous techniques to try and build its customer-base, and releasing free games is one of those things. In recent months, the store became increasingly generous in what it offered.
These free weekly titles have ranged across various different genres and price-points, with nearly a hundred dollars of free software coming out in one week of April. Indeed, even modern classics like Alien: Isolation have been free again recently on the store, while iconic cult games like Hand of Fate 2 also got a look in from the store's weekly free giveaway. These giveaways are despite recent court documents indicating that the company is losing money to the tune of nearly half a billion dollars in Epic Games Store losses. However, this does not seem to bother the company.
In fact, it seems to be pivoting by providing an even greater breadth of Epic Games Store free content; it seems the store is diversifying its approach to free releases. On April 29th, the Epic Games Store will be releasing over $100 of free extra content for Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms. Alongside that, the store just opened the early access for Core, which is a development, publishing, and distribution platform for Unreal Engine games. Players can access a huge library of different titles, with the software's developers getting a huge potential audience from the Epic Games Store.
At the time of writing, two titles are free on the Epic Games Store. One of these is the 2020 classic Alien: Isolation. This is not the first time the game has been free on the store, though, as it was part of the 15 free games for Christmas the service offered. It is back again, bringing the landmark Alien video game to a potentially massive audience once more. After severely unpopular titles in the franchise's video game history like Aliens: Colonial Marines, Isolation was particularly popular. The blend of survival horror, science-fiction exploration, and intricate stealth systems perfectly captured the terror of the original films. The alien was no longer a silly dancing caricature, but an fear-provoking nightmare with highly reactive artificial intelligence.
Arguably one of many prestige triple-A video games with incredible stories, Alien: Isolation is an very high value title for the store to make free. In fact, at around 40 dollars without a discount, the game follows a trend of forty dollar games becoming the free titles on the Epic Games Store over the past few weeks. Hand of Fate 2 sits at a similar price point normally, and is also set for a free release on the store. Last week, the games released on the store for free stacked up to nearly 100 dollars of free content. The current free titles total around $80 of content together. In general, it seems that the store is stepping up the amount of free content it gives away each week, with the 29th's offering being exactly $100 of in-game content.
Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms is a free-to-play game normally, which perhaps makes it a strange addition to the free section of the Epic Games Store. The game is a strategy management title that takes the most iconic properties from within the Dungeons and Dragons franchise and unites them for a set of grand adventures. The game's reach is fairly impressive, taking some of the most important figures of DnD canon and placing them alongside kobolds with only fifteen minutes of airtime on an actual play show. It's a solid idea, acknowledging Dungeons and Dragons' place as an eclectic mix of tone and characters that morphs and shifts over the years.
Making some in-game content for a free-to-play available is unusual. It certainly bucks the trend for the "weekly free game" expectation that the store has fostered. Interestingly, this strategy of trying to onboard gamers with free offerings mirrors the wider strategy of the Epic Games Store. While it does not quite fit with gifting Epic Games customers a completely free game, it does potentially attract Idle Champions fans from other services. The free games are used as a type of scattershot marketing technique. Its aim? To attract as many different types of gamers as possible. Once the gamers are invested with a few titles in the Epic Games launcher, it becomes a lot easier to get them buying games through the store.
Core is a fascinating new app that acts as a platform for various aspects of game creation. This includes development, publishing, and distribution, alongside gaming itself. The app offers a space for people to enjoy games, but also get a start in producing them. The app requires an Epic Games account to use, but it marks a really interesting move for Epic in diversifying the content it makes free for its customers. The aforementioned Epic Games Store losses were welcomed by CEO Tim Sweeney, who remarked that the current loss of the store is a concerted investment in future capital from engaged consumers. Thanks to financial backing from corporate giants like Tencent, the store is unlikely to run out of money any time soon.
Core is not the only way that Epic is switching up its free content, as several other apps have been added to the store recently. Itch-io, Brave, KenShape, Krita, and iHeartRadio have all joined Spotify as Epic Games Store apps. Core's similarity to Itch-io is obvious, as it will provide a similar platform for Unreal Engine developers to share their games. With the upcoming "free game" the store is offering next week, a pivot towards apps and games-as-service is quite apparent in the Epic Games Store. As the CEO of Epic Games has stated, the storefront is purely aimed at onboarding as many different players and creators as possible. If the Epic Games Store hopes to compete with Steam, it will need every advantage possible.
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