Exclusives, free games and Fortnite: Behind the scenes on the Epic Games Store strategy

pcgamesinsider.biz:

Whenever we sit down with Epic Games boss Tim Sweeney, there's always a lot to talk about - especially at a venue like GDC. 

We could have chatted about the changes it has made to the Unreal Engine, or the $100m MegaGrants it announced at the San Francisco trade show. Perhaps we could have asked the top bod about the continued success of battle royale title Fortnite. Maybe we could see how Sweeney's collection of fancy fast cars has grown since that game took Epic to the mega leagues. 

But the Epic Games Store is without a doubt the biggest thing the company has done in the last year. Announced at the end of 2018, this platform has shaken up the PC games retail space with more aggressive revenue sharing and a younger audience that doesn't have Steam accounts.

But it isn't just the 250m-plus strong battle royale audience coming to the platform - the regular free games that Epic rolls out on its platform every, er, fortnight have also proven a huge draw. So far, 85m players have downloaded the launcher - though Sweeney refuses to tell us what portion of that audience has actually spent money or downloaded one of the free games. 

"[The launch] has gone beyond our wildest dreams," Sweeney tells PCGamesInsider.biz.

"Our plan was to find the Fortnite audience, with new players coming from us releasing a free game every two weeks plus some really great exclusives like Metro Exodus. The free games have brought in a huge number of players - much more than we expected. It's a great model. Most companies attract customers by running ads, paying Google and Facebook a lot of money. Instead, we pay developers for the right to release their game for a limited period of time for free. They get money, they build awareness of their game,