Every week, the Epic Games Store offers free games which you would normally have to pay for. But though free games should actually make every gamer's heart beat faster, interest in them seems to be declining more and more. We wondered what could be causing this.
Just a few years ago, it sounded like an unattainable dream: Piles of free full-fledged games every month. But the dream came true: Epic Games adopted the strategy of luring users to the game store with regular game gifts. Since its launch in 2018, there have been almost continuous free games for users. However, despite the increasing offerings, the download numbers continue to decline.
Epic Games Store In Trouble: Free Games Are Becoming Less And Less Popular
Epic Games has once again released figures from its annual report about 2023. From this, you can not only see the total number of users, but also the number of free games offered and the frequency of their downloads.
In 2021, 89 free games were offered, which were claimed over 765 million times. Already in 2022, you can see a downward trend. Despite offering a whopping 10 more games, the number of claims dropped to 700 million. This trend continued in 2023, on an even larger scale. The 86 free games offered were only claimed 586 million times. Compared to 2021, the numbers of claims dropped by 23.4%.
But what is the reason for this?
Why Less People Want Free Games Anymore
To get to the bottom of the reasons for the declining interest, it makes sense to take a closer look at the lineup of Epic Games' freebies. How has the lineup changed? Are there more or fewer free games? What kind of games are being offered?
In 2021, Epic Games offered a total of 103 games in their program, which were claimed 749 million times. The sheer number of offered freebies has decreased since then. However, it didn't decrease as much as the number of claimed games. So, there must be other reasons for the decline.
Our colleagues at GameRant have taken the effort to compile a list that includes every game given away by Epic Games. And there are quite a lot of them. Everyone can judge for themselves the quality of the games offered.
However, the number of bigger and more popular games has steadily decreased since 2020. And the big titles that were offered later on had already been part of the freebie lineup one or more times before. For example, Fallout 3 was available for free at Epic Games in 2022 and 2023. Also, the Tomb Raider Trilogy was given away twice: in 2021 and 2022. Shadow of the Tomb Raider could also be snagged individually in the form of the Definitive Edition in 2022.
So you could say that the free games became less appealing, either because of the games themselves or due to the duplicate offers.
Speaking of duplicates: Over the past few years, Epic Games hasn't been the only entity offering free games. Since 2020, Amazon Prime has regularly offered loads of games at no extra cost. The Game Pass from Microsoft, which has been around since 2017 in the form of Xbox Game Pass, has also become more popular.
With so many providers, there is inevitably an oversupply of games for players. If you have to check every month on 5 platforms how many free games you can collect, you eventually lose interest. As for myself: My game libraries are already overflowing. I don't even remember how many times I've acquired the Tomb Raider Trilogy by now.
In addition, it's simply impossible to play all the games we receive for free. If our own pile of shame is already full, we are less inclined to claim free games.
So there are a lot of factors at play when it comes to fewer people taking advantage of Epic's free games offer. These are only the things we could think of.
Why do you think there is a decline in interest? Let us know in the comments!