Epic Games is rivalling Steam Games with an enticing weekly video game giveaway.
Every Thursday Epic Games is giving away a free game, which is available for download for a week – this week it is Civilization VI and last week it was Grand Theft Auto V. The next game will remain a mystery until Thursday.
Epic Games, which developed the popular video games Fortnite and Unreal, only launched its online store Epic Games Store in December 2018.
While Epic Games is temporarily giving games away for free and offers free-to-play games permanently, they continue to make money from these games on micro, in-game transactions.
Gamers can access Fornite, Dauntless, The Cycle, Battle Breakers, Auto Chess, Magic The Gathering Arena, and Paladins for free on epicgames.com.
Epic Games’ giveaway comes in the midst of the COVID-19 video gaming boom. According to SteamDB, the number of concurrent users on Steam hit a new record on 30th April, when it reached 24.5 million.
Steam is the largest digital distribution platform, and as of 2013 it held around 75% of the market.
Since its 2018 launch Epic Games Store has attempted to gain a greater share of the market. For instance, Fortnite is available exclusively on the Epic Games launcher. Epic Games also gives developers 88% of revenue. Valve takes around 30% of all game sales made on Steam, though this rate is gradually lowered as a game hits certain sales milestones.
