Do You Buy Games on Epic Games Store?

[64K]

I was just reading an article where Tim Sweeney said that most of the timed exclusives were not a good investment by Epic for their store but the free games have been a success:

Many of Epic's exclusivity deals were 'not good investments,' says Tim Sweeney, but the free games program 'has been just magical'

The most cost-effective way to get new users on the Epic Games Store has been the free games, not the exclusives.

www.pcgamer.com

"We spent a lot of money on exclusives," said Sweeney. "A few of them worked extremely well. A lot of them were not good investments, but the free games program has been just magical."

But that leads to the obvious question. Is the success measured in number of accounts, number of games owned on EGS or is it a success financially? I have seen reports from time to time that financially EGS is doing poorly financially but that could be because of the ongoing costs of timed exclusives and free games. If they stopped that perhaps the store would be a financial success.

I have around 20 free games on EGS and I haven't played a single one of them yet so I stopped doing that years ago but I did buy two games there that I couldn't get anywhere else at the time so I chose "I buy a few games there".

 

[Marcus L]

Bought a couple from there, ghost busters was one that got released for free after the fact , Tony Hawks pro skater 1/2 and Wonderboy, I tend to buy most of my games cheap on key sites or sales and the bulk of my library is on steam otherwise

 

[kapone32]

I chose the 3rd option even though the only Game I bought was something I can't even remember. To be honest I rarely look at my Epic account as upgrading Windows has exposed the biggest caveat for Epic. Having to re-download all of your library. I am pretty sure I have over 80 titles on Epic. One of the free Games I actually like to play is the Outer Worlds but for some reason that Game freezes after about 10 minutes of Gameplay.

 

[Assimilator]

Never used EGS, never intend to.

 

[Super Firm Tofu]

I just checked and I have 250+ games on Epic, the overwhelming number of which were freebies, either through Epic or Amazon.

I've bought a few, the most recent were Ubisoft because they activate directly through Ubi and don't require the use of Epic Launcher. I have two exclusives, Alan Wake II and Alan Wake Remastered that can't be bought anywhere else.

I don't use the Epic Launcher anywhere. Heroic Launcher works perfectly fine on both Windows and Linux.

@kapone32 With Heroic, you can also re-import previously installed games without the need to download again.

 

[AusWolf]

I bought Alan Wake 2 and Avatar: FoP on discount. The rest of my Epic games are freebies.

 

[Frick]

I've bought some. I buy them where they are the cheapest, and since Steam uses the euro and not my local currency Epic is cheaper when that currency is low, which it has been for a while.

 

[thesmokingman]

Just be careful of your Epic acct security. I posted about how hackers can steal epic accts easily.

 

[Shihab]

Only freebies.
The platform is still too immature for me to consider investing in it. I never had much to spare, and I'd rather not spend it on something I don't use. When it reaches what Steam was a decade ago (and I honestly hope it does), then I might.

 

[ir_cow]

Just 300 free games and counting Thanks fortnite players for funding the free games.

I would consider buying if they added F2A.

 

[64K]

Just a little info on how many games Epic gives away. Last year EGS gave away 586 million games in all. That's astonishing! Players spent about 950 million dollars on games. Around 1/3rd of that was on third party games (i.e not Fortnite MTs).

The Epic Games Store gave away nearly 586 million games in 2023, as 40 million new PC users joined the platform across the year

Epic aims to add a new download manager and support for third-party subscription services to the storefront in 2024.

www.pcgamer.com

 

[Frick]

Just be careful of your Epic acct security. I posted about how hackers can steal epic accts easily

What does this mean?

 

[DaemonForce]

I currently have 135 (free) games on Epic. The iSCSI for this is closing in on 1.5TB soon, which will make me happy when it settles again.

Currently waiting on a few in my grab list: Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, Dakar Desert Rally, Deus Ex - Mankind Divided, Marvel's Midnight Suns...
I will not spend a dime here. The launcher is NOT user friendly and there are issues organizing content. The data alone is expensive, hence the wait list (~200GB).
I like to take good games that are demo'd here and buy them on Steam when released. Last month I did exactly that with Crime Boss: Rockay City. Shipped with massive DLC.
Also picked up a few others at a discount.

I trust Valve with my life and whether or not that is a healthy level of it, you decide. Epic is really good for providing games where I don't want to operate on that level and the problems with the launcher are more of a benefit to me for this reason. Epic has more impossible to wrangle games that I can NOT remove from the library and that makes it ideal for those like me that operate like a pseudo-hoarder where what I currently have helps with the decision of how much I ultimately want visible in my Steam library. Epic also makes it easier to hide the entire library from public since nobody networks through Epic and the few that do are basically full time content brains. We know exactly what we're doing here. ✔

 

[Deleted member 229121]

I bought Borderlands 3 on EGS since my friends didn't want to wait for Steam.
That's it, everything else was free and haven't even had it installed in the past year or so.

 

[WhiteNoise]

Just the free ones. I prefer Steam.

 

[Dr. Dro]

I buy games regularly on the EGS, and use it to top-up Genshin Impact because I get 5 to 10% of the money back, which lowers the total cost significantly

I bought Borderlands 3 on EGS since my friends didn't want to wait for Steam.
That's it, everything else was free and haven't even had it installed in the past year or so.

I bought the super deluxe version of BL3 twice, once on EGS and once on Steam... and then the second season pass on Steam too. I am a total sucker

Did the same to Tetris Effect but that's a game deserves being bought twice, at least it wasn't 6+ times like Skyrim.

 

[Ferrum Master]

I would consider buying if they added F2A.

But they have... like since forever.

 

[gffermari]

I bought Alan Wake 2, Control, A Plague Tale series and probably one or two more.
In general it doesn't make any difference to me, if I play the game I want on Steam, EGS, GOG etc.

 

[ir_cow]

But they have... like since forever.

This is news to me. How many years did this take????

 

[Dr. Dro]

This is news to me. How many years did this take????

2FA been available for years on end now. Same for the shopping cart it was trolled over for so long. EGS has practically everything that a store needs nowadays. It lacks on social features since they don't have forums and removed the messaging system, but that's about it

 

[Lew Zealand]

I buy from EGS when the game is unlikely to be on GOG and it's cheaper than Steam. Doing a quick scan, that seems to be about a half dozen out of 226 so far.

 

[freeagent]

I bought Far Cry 6, and Battlefield V, but I have 169 free games from them. Wow.. I literally just counted lol..

Most of them are good, some of them I got for the kids.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

Mostly free games but I bought FF7R and Alan Wake 2 on there. I don't really have an issue with their store.

To be fair I don't really care for steam either so my view of online stores is they are all the same and just take money out of the developer/publishers hands. I don't really care which one is better none of them are so good I feel they justify a 20-30% cut in revenue and honestly I prefered valve when they actually made games.

Same with Epic really.

 

[erocker]

I've bought a few from time to time and I grab the free stuff when I can.

 

[ir_cow]

2FA been available for years on end now. Same for the shopping cart it was trolled over for so long. EGS has practically everything that a store needs nowadays. It lacks on social features since they don't have forums and removed the messaging system, but that's about it

hmm. I guess the last time I checked was 2021. Probably should enable it today.

I bought Far Cry 6, and Battlefield V, but I have 169 free games from them. Wow.. I literally just counted lol..

I'm at 430. 99% i'll never play.