this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2026
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Not really, you cost Epic money but give them more users. Which is what they want. Only get free games from them if you want to support Epic.
That logic only works if said users transition into paying customers. Epic wants you to either buy games from them or get hooked intonone of their "free" games like Fortnite. They do not profit at all by people redeeming and playing giveaways.
Disagree, free loading customers still help their customer base. They are still seen as potential customers and normalize having epic store client, legitimizing their own walled garden. It's similar to any free-to-play game. All the customers that pay $0 technically cost the company money, but it's worth having that dead weight to build a player base to get the whales in. Just by installing and having an epic account will inevitably draw other people in that will spend money and lure in investors and developers. They're not dumb.
Really don't think of it from an individual point of view, but as a whole.
I agree for "free to play" games, but not for the store. The idea is that if you use their store you might convert to a customer or start playing their "free to play" games like Fortnite. If you never do, then you are nothing but a cost center. The idea of "we have tons of customers" doesn't really track either because articles like the one posted here shine the light on how non-sensical their giveaways are.
Another angle could be to get you into their store everytime you want to play your giveaway game. Maybe that way they can hook you with something else. That should not be a problem if you use apps.like Heroic Game Launcher and bypass the Epic app altogether to play your games.