Epic will pay $2.37 for your information

I feel so dirty and worthless. Turns out, Epic games didn't pay as much as you might think for their giveaways. Part of this probably has to do with most of those games being old and on sale on rival platforms (seriously, usually when an EGS game is free it's been on sale recently on their sworn enemy Steam or their choom GoG) - the devs/publishers probably do factoring on their end based on recent revenue trends.

Still, I'm surprised how cheap we all are

Apple are obviously also assholes, but do like that after Epic tried to portray themselves as some Willy Wallace type figure fighting "da man" (which aside from being manufactured, attempting to get their fortnite kiddies involved, was clearly bullshit) and now are consequently getting doxxed.

Free games are nice though. Never fucking use their service, but take free shit.

I don't believe companies would let them do this with such shit compensation. I think there's some classic tried and true fuckery going on, the one Epic exec wants to meet with a studio/publisher exec to discuss a business deal, takes them on a drug and/or alcohol fueled romp involving strippers, hookers, more drugs... and so yeah, after having the time of their lives, these guys are pals now. Maybe the studio/publisher rep would be willing to just give them the games for their free offers but are like "I gotta get something just to appease nosy shareholders". Or maybe that romp instead became something that Epic used to leverage a deal under threat of blackmail - "oh I am sure your wife and family and the shareholders would love to see your sexual exploits that you are too blackout drunk to remember, but don't worry, we recorded the whole thing, now, here's the terms to the deal, sign it, you'll get some money for cover, and this will all go away... for now." I also just remembered they are almost half owned by the Chinese and the government exercises use of blackmail, bribery, and honeytraps for not just intelligence purposes, but for business related espionage... wouldn't surprise me at all.

I knew they were only doing it because it was cheap, but those numbers are a lot lower than I thought they'd be.

Someone once said that if you are not paying for a product, YOU are the product. Free games, free services, free accounts, free emails, you name it, are not really free.

Epic just gave me Alien Isolation. Pretty happy about it.

But yeah. Shady company is shady.

You forgot the /s.

Epic is not a good guy at all. But people would take y'all more seriously if y'all talked about the actual facts instead of "Epic wants to destroy the world and they're evil!" :/

It's why people freaking out over companies spying is stupid. They all pretty much do. Like Xbox One Kinect vs Alexa. What's the difference between "Xbox on!" and "Alexa, turn the Xbox One on"? There is no difference. Yet gamers freaked out about the Xbox One always listening, but they're buying Alexa and telling it to turn their console on.

That's not enough for a full-priced game. They should at least give a free game away.

Yep. It's kind of pointless caring, since if for whatever reason, we suddenly become a person of interest, they'd have absolutely 0 problem finding you in a day.

And as mention, all your shit is tracked, on mass, everything. Really jack shit you can do, other than becoming some weird Ted Kaczynski'st weirdo living in a cabin away from modern technology.

Super dependent.

That is pretty much my position.

Just because companies do it doesn't mean we should give up and be okay with it. It's a scummy practice to deceive customers in order to profit off them. They should be called out for it, and people should take issue with it. They don't own us, so let's not pretend we belong to them.

Giving in and accepting it is for the truly weak willed.

Such a crap company. Still taking their free shit though.

Poor old Epic. They just made 9 billion in revenue from Fortnite with 5.5 billion in profit in two years. Definitely a small company fighting for all the other little guys against Steam. /s

Or — and hear me out — or Epic reached out to Playdead, for example, and offered them $350K in the year 2019 for the ability to give their game from 2010 away for free. "Limbo" is greatly appreciated and fondly remembered, but it's dead. Playdead looks at it and just goes, hey, free money we can put toward whatever we're working on next!

@zmanbarzel: exactly - these companies weren't forced to do this. They must have done the math and said "yeah, that's a solid amount of money for - let's guess X people will claim it for "free", and that payout per person's comparable or even more revenue than we expect to make in that timeframe on our old ass game"

@xantufrog: And of these people claiming it for free, hopefully at least a small percentage will play and enjoy it, thus priming them for Playdead's next game. (Or in the case of "Limbo," Playdead's next next game since "Inside" is already out.)

Then call out and boycott every company. The time to care about this was when Edward Snowden called it out and made it known to everyone. No one cared or did anything, so meh.

A scientist using video game street slang. I've seen it all now. :)

I get only free games on EPIC