When I created an account for the Epic Games Store about a year and a half ago, my PC library across all of my storefront accounts was pretty paltry. Mostly this was due to a lack of an honest-to-goodness gaming-capable rig; I was mostly playing indies on my slow-chugging personal computer that I had previously primarily used for my Ableton dalliances. But once I got a decent desktop PC — and a really decent laptop after that — the number of games I could confidently run began to blossom and balloon.
Most of the games I played were through Steam — well, most of the games I paid for, I mean — unless there was a caveat like needing a specific launcher, say, or for some of the older or more obscure titles (for which I was mostly relying on GOG). But Epic Games’ storefront, although originally devoid of many basic quality-of-life features, like the much-derided lack of a shopping cart, at the very least offered a consistent stream of free titles, some of which were high-quality, bigger-budget fare.
I managed to get the entire recent Tomb Raider trilogy for free. That’s three frickin’ triple-A games that were pretty solid all around. In fact, when it comes to Epic, my free games no doubt make up a vast majority of the games in my library.
Heck, just today I got a free copy of a game called In Sound Mind. I have no idea what it is, and I doubt I’ll ever play it, but it was free and I now own it. So that’s something, I guess.
And for their part, Epic has done nothing but right by me as a devoted customer (perhaps both the words devoted and customer deserve their own sets of scare quotes).
It’s quite frankly insane how much value my free Epic Games account has given me, simply by signing up and clicking the “Give Me My Free Stuff” button. How Epic manages to do this, I guess I don’t know. Perhaps the company has an aversion to profit, or simply they just want to be everyone’s best friend. Regardless of how they do it, I am thankful that they do, and I hope they continue to do it, even if I never play most of these games in my life.
People talk about Game Pass being the best value in video gaming. And yeah, it’s pretty solid if you actually take advantage of the service by playing a few of the games on offer per month. But getting multiple free games every month from Epic Games, simply by submitting your email address and agreeing to their terms of service — and, of course, installing their launcher, and possibly jumping through the hoops of the Arkose Labs Captcha System — Epic Games’ generosity beats out Microsoft’s subscription service in my book.
Granted, you don’t get to choose which games are free, and more often than not there is a higher number of duds and thuds than hits and crits. But to that I say, “So what?” I didn’t pay for these games. And who knows? Maybe if I actually tried some of them, I might find I actually really enjoy them. I just might do that someday, though not today.
But even if these serve no greater purpose than padding out the number of thumbnails I can glance over in my Epic Games library? Well, that’s still far more value than paying for a Game Pass I also never use. As a surefire way of getting free games on a consistent basis, the Epic Games Store is pretty hard to beat.
