Comment on I hate when a PC game is ONLY available on Epic Games store
MacNCheezus@lemmy.today 2 weeks agoNah, pretty sure this isn’t about the data. They just want to encourage people to go through the effort of setting up an account and downloading their launcher in the hopes that they can then later entice you to buy something else while you’re there. Every time you run one of those free games they get to show you another offer, and since you’re already signed up, the hurdle to buying something is far lower than it otherwise would have been.
SRo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Yeah, it’s a market share/userbase play
MacNCheezus@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
Correct, as an added bonus, they get to report X million monthly active users on top of that to their investors (that’s why they make you come back every week for a new game). Likely at relatively little cost to them since they don’t have to pay full price for those games.
It’s probably still expensive as hell but when you have a competitor as big as Steam in the market, you gotta be able to afford some ammunition, and the Unreal Engine likely still brings in tons of cashflow.
SRo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Actually it is (or at least was) surprisingly cheap for them. A while ago internal data leaked and they paid surprisingly little for the giveaways. Either the Devs are desperate or there was some kind of backdoor deal like no or very little fees (for engine and distribution) for the next game they develop or something like that. Look it up, the data is still out there; incredibly cheap.
MacNCheezus@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
Right. They probably wouldn’t have been able to pull this off for as long as they have been if it was just hemorrhaging money.