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Epic Games Store will continue free games program through 2020

In looking at the year ahead, Epic Games announced that it would continue offering weekly free games through the entirety of 2020.

Ozzie Mejia

January 14, 2020 7:00 AM

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The Epic Games Store hit the ground running in 2019 and it's the sort of momentum that the company hopes to maintain throughout 2020. In an effort to do so, Epic Games announced on Tuesday that it would continue one of its most popular programs for the entirety of the next year. The weekly free game program has been extended through the end of 2020.

Those who visit the Epic Games Store every week will find at least one game being offered up free of charge. Once that game is claimed, it's free to keep. The Epic Games Store will officially continue this program with new titles set to debut on a weekly basis. There's no word on what games will be offered, so it looks like that will remain a surprise.

In terms of the storefront itself, the Epic Games Store will look to grow over the course of the year. The company issued light details on some of the items on their agenda, including the addition of more PC gaming store libraries. This also includes keyless purchasing integration with the folks at Humble.

All of this was detailed in a Tuesday blog post that included a special infographic with stats, such as:

• 108 million Epic Games Store PC customers
• $680 million spent by PC users ($251 million of which was spent on third-party PC games)
• 73 free games offered in 2019, with 200 million copies claimed
• Magic the Gathering, Predator: Hunting Grounds, Auto Chess, Rogue Company, and Godfall as among the Epic Games Store PC-gaming exclusives set to debut in 2020

More than that, Epic is also looking to build on the idea of cross-platform play that it first introduced in Fortnite. The company lauded Phoenix Labs for using Epic's tech to make Dauntless playable across PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. Epic hopes more games will follow suit and offer cross-play across PC, consoles, and mobile devices and is teasing more cross-platform games will be introduced to the Epic Games Store throughout the next year.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?