You’re not really dependent on EGS just because of the free games; neither in the sense of drugs nor as in you build an infrastructure on it, like with other software. Let’s say you’re a student and get Microsoft products for free. You wrote applications for Windows, you create office documents. Later, Microsoft charges for new versions (since you’re no longer a student). Now you have the choice: keep using unsupported software which is a security risk; pay up; or migrate everything you have created over the years, which will take a long time. You have become dependent on the vendor.
With games, who gives a damn? It’s not like Little Nightmares 2 replaced Little Nightmares. I just keep that version. They’re completely different things. No more free games with EGS? Okay, now what? I’ll just keep using what I have. There is no lock-in effect. This is all just a promotion for their shop like a free ride voucher for a theme park where they hope you spend money on other stuff as well. Or basically any loss-leader anywhere, just that it’s not sold under price, but actually given away for free.
There’s a good reason the free games are so far down on their website, they want you to scroll all the way down and look at their stuff so that you maybe buy something. Which is fine by me, I actually even bought something there once (shouldn’t have, game was way below expectations, but that’s on me).
So yeah they’re not giving stuff out because they’re good. But it’s also not nefarious. Just really lazy and I guess more expensive in the long run.
Its simple advertising. If you have to log in once a week or month or however often, and scroll through their store to click on the free games, a good percentage of those will actually buy something based on what they see. Whether its purchased at egs or somewhere else makes no difference.
Besides all that, having it installed on a device means epic can gather information about you while its running, even if you only open it to collect free games.
Thr bottom line is if it cost epic money to give away free games, they simply wouldnt do it, but as it stands it works out fantastic and a bunch of gamers have no idea they are being tricked at all. Thats more than enough reason to simply avoid egs altogether in my opinion.
You’re not really dependent on EGS just because of the free games; neither in the sense of drugs nor as in you build an infrastructure on it, like with other software. Let’s say you’re a student and get Microsoft products for free. You wrote applications for Windows, you create office documents. Later, Microsoft charges for new versions (since you’re no longer a student). Now you have the choice: keep using unsupported software which is a security risk; pay up; or migrate everything you have created over the years, which will take a long time. You have become dependent on the vendor.
With games, who gives a damn? It’s not like Little Nightmares 2 replaced Little Nightmares. I just keep that version. They’re completely different things. No more free games with EGS? Okay, now what? I’ll just keep using what I have. There is no lock-in effect. This is all just a promotion for their shop like a free ride voucher for a theme park where they hope you spend money on other stuff as well. Or basically any loss-leader anywhere, just that it’s not sold under price, but actually given away for free.
There’s a good reason the free games are so far down on their website, they want you to scroll all the way down and look at their stuff so that you maybe buy something. Which is fine by me, I actually even bought something there once (shouldn’t have, game was way below expectations, but that’s on me).
So yeah they’re not giving stuff out because they’re good. But it’s also not nefarious. Just really lazy and I guess more expensive in the long run.
Its simple advertising. If you have to log in once a week or month or however often, and scroll through their store to click on the free games, a good percentage of those will actually buy something based on what they see. Whether its purchased at egs or somewhere else makes no difference.
Besides all that, having it installed on a device means epic can gather information about you while its running, even if you only open it to collect free games.
Thr bottom line is if it cost epic money to give away free games, they simply wouldnt do it, but as it stands it works out fantastic and a bunch of gamers have no idea they are being tricked at all. Thats more than enough reason to simply avoid egs altogether in my opinion.
You don’t need the client to connect the games, I just do it via browser. And you don’t need it to launch the games either.
Apart from all this, I think they do lose money on the store, and are subsidizing it with Fortnite money. But I could be wrong.