Tim Sweeney Says Many Epic Games Store Exclusivity Deals “Were Not Good Investments”

Exclusives apparently haven’t moved the needle for the Epic Games Store. In fact, most haven’t even been wise investments, according to Epic Games founder and CEO Tim Sweeney. What has worked instead for the company is giving away free games.

PC Gamer reports that Sweeney revealed this strategy evaluation with reporters earlier this week while discussing user acquisition for the Epic Games Store. “We spent a lot of money on exclusives,” said Sweeney. “A few of them worked extremely well. A lot of them were not good investments, but the free games program has been just magical.”

Sweeney didn’t go into detail about which “few” worked out. Arguably the latest big exclusive for the Epic Games Store was Alan Wake 2, which developer Remedy mentioned hadn’t earned back its development costs earlier this year. Alan Wake 2 was one of GameSpot’s 10 best games of 2023. Other examples of previous Epic Games Store exclusives include Metro Exodus, Outer Wilds, and Hades.

Meanwhile, Sweeney seems all-in with the free games initiative for the Epic Games Store. “Giving away free games seems counterintuitive as a strategy, but companies spend money to acquire users into games,” the Fortnite boss explained. “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.”

Currently, the Epic Games Store is giving away Death’s Gambit: Afterlife and World of Warships, with The Callisto Protocol on the way soon. Last year, Epic offered up 86 free titles, with 586 million claimed by store users. In 2022, almost 700 million free games were claimed by Epic Games Store customers.