Want free video games? Check out Epic Games’s epic giveaway

When Epic Games went from being “the people who made Fortnite” to being “the people who created an online game store with the intent of rivaling Steam” eyebrows were raised. Many didn’t think the Epic Games Store stood a chance against the giant that is Valve’s Steam – up until that point Steam practically had a monopoly on PC video game sales.

Epic Games, however, has done pretty well for themselves. They’ve snagged some exclusive releases since their start in December of 2018 and anyone who plays the ever-popular Fortnite has to log into the game store if they don’t have a shortcut for the game on their desktop – which means accidental window shopping can happen.

The big thing that Epic Games has been doing nearly since its beginning is free game giveaways. They frequently give users (and all users) games completely for free – no strings attached.

The giveaway model

The way Epic Games does this is by having a little notification pop up on users’ computers when they sign into the Epic Games store telling users what game they can get for free. The regularity of this varies from monthly to sometimes weekly. It’s a great boon for people looking for something to do with their free time, but no money they can spend on games.

The video games are often small indie titles looking to build an audience or popular AAA games that are multiple years old. Giving the games away for free benefits both types of games in the same way (and Epic Games too): if people like it enough they might want to buy DLC & utilize microtransactions, or they may want to buy a different game from the same game studio.

Often Epic Games will further incentivize you to actually purchase something by giving you a $10 coupon with your free game that you can use only if you spend at least fifteen dollars. (We’re not certain, but we’d also guess that you can’t use those coupons on sale items.)

The fifteen days of Christmas

Last year Epic Games had a “sale” where they gave away a new game every day. A week ago the Epic Games Store Twitter account confirmed they would be doing the same thing again this year – a truly exciting announcement for gamers. Not only is a game given away each day that you can claim for free, but if the games being given away aren’t your cup of tea there are plenty of exciting titles on discount too.

Each day you claim a free game you’ll also be given one of those $10 coupons we just mentioned so if there’s a full-price game calling your name it could be worth your while to snag a free game whether you intend to play it or not. Luckily, you don’t have to download the game to get the coupon – just claim it.

What games can you get?

The games being given away for free are a mystery until the day they can be claimed – like a slightly shorter digital advent calendar. What we can tell you is that the first day’s giveaway is the game Cities: Skylines – a popular sim game that’s five years old, but still gets talked about fondly, and has a 9/10 on Steam. If you don’t already have it we recommend you grab your free copy to give it a try.

The games on sale are worth getting excited over, and we do have information on them. For starters, you can get the brand-freaking-new game Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla at 17% off. For a sixty dollar game that may not seem like a big discount, but giant AAA games like this one usually don’t go on sale so soon after release.

The much talked about new Ubisoft game Immortals: Fenyx Rising is also on sale for 33% off, and Watch Dogs: Legion is at the same discount percent. Star Wars Squadrons and Godfall are 40% off and 15% off respectively.

Epic games is doing 15 days of free games :3 pretty cool pic.twitter.com/HosQTuwXIr

— 🃏🛡Apostle🛡🃏 (@apahstle) December 15, 2020

Rumored games

While we don’t know for certain what will be given away each day during the Epic Games Holiday Sale, there are plenty of rumors. The above tweet was posted on December 15 and was supposedly a list of the games that would be given out for free along with the dates they’d be given out.

The first day of the sale, today is listed as Dying Light so we can with 100% certainty debunk that one. A lot of the other titles in the image seem more like wishful thinking than anything else. (Borderlands 3 is only a year old – we have a hard time believing that would just be handed out to everyone.)

However, if any of these games sound exciting to you all you have to do is log into the Epic Games Store each day to find out if any of these titles do get given away.