Epic Games has reaffirmed that it will continue to giveaway free games on its store through the year 2023 and beyond.
Speaking at Unreal Fest 2023, Kyle Billing, Director Product and Content Strategy at Epic Games, mentioned that the free games giveaway on the Epic Games Store is going to continue through 2023 and beyond. It was stated that the program continues to be a major driver of user acquisition and conversion to paying users. According to the presentation, to-date, the initiative has brought in over 90 million new users.
Additionally, it was mentioned that Deals of the Week is the store’s first evergreen campaign designed to surface content outside of its tent-pole campaigns. The initiative is open for for all content and for everyone to participate. Applications are taken directly through the Discount Management Tool. The deals will go live every Tuesday and will be positioned across multiple premium-shelf-spaces.
Launching on October 16, 2023, is the Epic First Run initiative, which targets new release titles that launch exclusively on the Epic Games Store. Furthermore, the Now on Epic program drives catalog growth by incentivizing partners to bring back catalog titles over to the Epic Games Store. With both programs, the partner will capture 100% of net revenue from player spending on payments processed by Epic Games during their first 6 months. Unlike Epic First Run, where the company has not stated a date for the program’s conclusion, the Now on Epic program will only run for one calendar year.
The presentation also discussed performance improvements for the storefront. The company’s concentration started with improving cold start times, and from there it will aim to improve systray restore timings. The EGS client now has a reduced cold start from 13 seconds back in February to under 5 seconds with the last test in August. Moving forward, the next phase of work revolves around narrowing the gap in SysTray Restore, specifically SysTray Restore to library. Users will start to see these improvements in 2024.
