Free PC Games: Epic Games Store Giving Away a New Title Weekly Through 2019

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At the E3 gaming conference this week, Epic Games announced that it has added 15 new games to its store. The company also revealed that it is extending its free games offering from one every two weeks to one every week until the end of 2019. 

A Free Game Every Week

When Epic Games launched its online store, it said users would receive a free game every two weeks. Last month, the company announced a free game every week for its month-long summer sale. Now, just days before this summer sale would have ended, Epic also announced that it'll be giving away a free PC game every week until the end of the year. 

Game publishers have been rather slow to adopt Epic Games’ store so far. Some games may already have deals with the company’s competitors; however, game publishers may take a second look at Epic’s store before publishing new games, considering the significant discount the company offers to developers using its Unreal Engine gaming engine (just 12% compared to the 20-30% they’d have to pay Steam, plus another 5% commission to Epic if they use its gaming engine).

Epics Games Store's New Games

During E3, Epic also announced 15 titles coming to its store, with five of them being exclusively delivered through the company’s online store.

The new exclusive games are:

  • Auto Chess 
  • Chivalry 2 
  • Shenmue 3 
  • Untitled Goose Game
  • Zombie Army 4: Dead War 

The other 10 games, which are also available from other retailers, are:

  • Atomicrops
  • Cyberpunk 2077
  • The Griftlands
  • The Pathless
  • Phantom Brigade
  • Rune II
  • The Sojourn
  • Solar Ash Kingdom
  • Twin Mirror
  • What the Golf
Lucian Armasu
Lucian Armasu
Lucian Armasu is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He covers software news and the issues surrounding privacy and security.
5 Comments Comment from the forums
  • jimmysmitty
    Until they provide a platform that's equal to Steam in every feature and stop their underhanded methods of getting exclusives I wont even take a free game from them. I probably still wont even if they do mainly due to them being shady.

    To explain though, so people don't misinterpret me, they are getting timed exclusives by paying the publishers a big chunk of money up front and including a Revenue Guarantee, see here for that: https://www.pcgamer.com/epics-tim-sweeney-reveals-how-the-company-lands-exclusives-for-the-epic-store/ , which I cannot support because both basically take consumer choice out of the picture. What incentive does a publisher have to go with what consumers want if a company if just paying you even if your game fails?

    Of course a lot of that is on the publishers and developers as well and many of them have not responded well to upset consumer. Metro was a big one. Borderlands 3 is another, where the developer itself is being just bad. I think Shenmue III is one of the worst because people are upset, some were expecting a Steam key for it, and want a refund and they straight up said "Nope" to that. It wouldn't be so bad if they didn't give people the option in the Kickstarter of Steam and they also didn't have a Steam page maybe it would be different but its just a whole mess now.

    Some people don't like that Tencent, a company known for very shady tactics in China, have a stake in Epic.
    Reply
  • bigdragon
    The Epic Store is entirely too developer/publisher-focused. Steam's community features allow gamers the opportunity to react to and check poor actions by developers/publishers. No other platform has quite matched what Steam can provide to its users. Steam isn't perfect and has many problems, but the community features are a leading positive.

    However, there is no denying that saving 15 to 25% in fees will move developers/publishers to Epic Store. That's HUGE. A business cannot just leave that money on the table. Epic Store's promotional sales have also been better than Steam's.

    Epic's money vs. Valve's market share and services -- not clear who will win in the long run. It's time for Valve to start making games again and to release a new Source Engine to compete with Unreal. As much as I hate exclusives, I'm barely-tolerant of exclusives when I don't have to pay for a separate hardware platform. The competition should help PC gamers.
    Reply
  • jimmysmitty
    bigdragon said:
    The Epic Store is entirely too developer/publisher-focused. Steam's community features allow gamers the opportunity to react to and check poor actions by developers/publishers. No other platform has quite matched what Steam can provide to its users. Steam isn't perfect and has many problems, but the community features are a leading positive.

    However, there is no denying that saving 15 to 25% in fees will move developers/publishers to Epic Store. That's HUGE. A business cannot just leave that money on the table. Epic Store's promotional sales have also been better than Steam's.

    Epic's money vs. Valve's market share and services -- not clear who will win in the long run. It's time for Valve to start making games again and to release a new Source Engine to compete with Unreal. As much as I hate exclusives, I'm barely-tolerant of exclusives when I don't have to pay for a separate hardware platform. The competition should help PC gamers.

    I have no issue with the developer cut. I have issue with the paying them for the exclusives and guaranteeing the revenue. That's an issue. Intel did this and it was a massive deal.

    So far no publisher has just picked EGS only for their game store. The exclusives have all been paid up front and will be given revenue guarantees. Any other game releases on most every platform.

    Also VALVe did release a new Source engine a while ago. Source 2. It is also royalty free for developers to use and that doesn't come with the caveat that they use Steam for the game.
    Reply
  • cryoburner
    jimmysmitty said:
    Until they provide a platform that's equal to Steam in every feature and stop their underhanded methods of getting exclusives I wont even take a free game from them.
    I'll take free games. A free game is a free game, and some of the titles they have given away are ones I had been interested in getting anyway. I don't currently have any intention of buying games there though, at least for the time being. The giveaways do seem like a good way to establish a new game distribution service though, since a big part of why people want games on Steam is because they already have a library of games there.

    And as much as I'm not fond of some of the things Epic has been doing lately, along with the lack of features on their client, Valve has kind of run downhill in recent years themselves. They got started as being one of the premier PC game developers, but when was the last time they released a proper new game? It's been the better part of a decade. Now they just take their cut from the sale of cosmetic items and games from other developers.

    And it used to be that most of the games that made it onto Steam were at least half-decent, but then they opened the floodgates to shovelware and asset-flips, causing many good titles to get lost among the sea of cash-grabs. They had a chance to fix that when they switched from Greenlight to Steam Direct, but they only made things worse by lowering the bar of entry even further. Steam sales have also been getting less enticing every year. It's like they're not even trying anymore, but instead just sitting back and milking the industry. If competitors making a hard push into the market encourage them to try harder, that might be a good thing.
    Reply
  • jimmysmitty
    cryoburner said:
    I'll take free games. A free game is a free game, and some of the titles they have given away are ones I had been interested in getting anyway. I don't currently have any intention of buying games there though, at least for the time being. The giveaways do seem like a good way to establish a new game distribution service though, since a big part of why people want games on Steam is because they already have a library of games there.

    And as much as I'm not fond of some of the things Epic has been doing lately, along with the lack of features on their client, Valve has kind of run downhill in recent years themselves. They got started as being one of the premier PC game developers, but when was the last time they released a proper new game? It's been the better part of a decade. Now they just take their cut from the sale of cosmetic items and games from other developers.

    And it used to be that most of the games that made it onto Steam were at least half-decent, but then they opened the floodgates to shovelware and asset-flips, causing many good titles to get lost among the sea of cash-grabs. They had a chance to fix that when they switched from Greenlight to Steam Direct, but they only made things worse by lowering the bar of entry even further. Steam sales have also been getting less enticing every year. It's like they're not even trying anymore, but instead just sitting back and milking the industry. If competitors making a hard push into the market encourage them to try harder, that might be a good thing.

    I also made the decision not to install the EGS client due to the snooping. I feel they are doing a they got caught and are just stating it wasn't supposed to.

    That said, while VALVe has not done a proper "game" in a while, they have still done a lot to benefit consumers. They helped push VR in a big way, created their own controller and even worked to make it so you could use ANY controller in a game run through Steam. Their stance on a game is they want to make sure its right and ready. Its why they don't talk much about a game until they are sure they are going to be launching it. I am fine with that. I would prefer they take their time to do it right instead of rushing it because people want it and it being sub-par. Look at CoD. New title almost every 1-2 years. And the quality kept going down and down and down.

    BTW the sales are not just Steam dependent. Steam works with developers and publishers for the sales. If they do not want to join in or only want a certain cut thats the rules. Steam doesn't just decide to give 50% off a certain title.
    Reply