Epic's freebie promos were cheaper than Facebook and Google Search ads, CEO says

Epic's free games initiative has helped drive up users on its proprietary storefront for a fraction of the price of advertising.

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In the world of retail, there's few things that are more effective than freebies. Promos, discounts, and of course free bonuses are a powerful motivator to get people into stores, both digital and physical. That's especially true for the Epic Games Store's free games program.

In a recent interview with PC Gamer, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney delivered some interesting comments on how EGS' freebies have helped drive user acquisition. According to Sweeney, securing free games is actually much, much cheaper than placing advertisements on social media and Google search. Epic has spent tens of millions of dollars on these kinds of deals over the years, with $11.6 million spent in the first 9 months alone, but the payoff has been worth it.

"Giving away free games seems counterintuitive as a strategy, but companies spend money to acquire users into games. For about a quarter of the price that it costs to acquire users through Facebook ads or Google Search Ads, we can pay a game developer a lot of money for the right to distribute their game to our users, and we can bring in new users to the Epic Games Store at a very economical rate."

What's even more interesting is that the freebies can actually spark full game sales on the Epic Store. This is somewhat akin to the Game Pass Effect--how Xbox Game Pass users will often buy more games even while subscribed to the service.

"You might think that this would hurt the sales prospects of games on the Epic Game Store, but developers who give away free games actually see an upsurge in the sale of their paid games on the store, just because their free game raises awareness," Sweeney said.

"It's so much that often developers, when they're about to launch a new game, come with us wanting to work closely on a timed release of a free game. Just to drive user awareness of their next game. That's been an awesome thing.

And it's been by far the most cost effective aspect of the Epic Games Store."