For the past few weeks, the Epic Games Store has been giving away free mystery games to its users with absolutely no strings attached. Unlike other "free game" promotions on other platforms that require subscription fees, the only thing people need to do to claim a free game through the Epic Games Store is download the launcher. Every Thursday, a new game is revealed, and the countdown starts for the next free Epic Games Store game.
This all started back in May, when the Epic Games Store gave away NBA 2K21 for free as the first mystery game to help promote the Epic Mega Sale. NBA 2K21 was then replaced by popular social deduction game Among Us the next week, which was then replaced by the most recent Epic Games Store free game, Frostpunk. This coming Thursday, June 10, will see yet another free Epic Games Store game added to the lineup, replacing Frostpunk.
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What exactly the next free Epic Games Store game is remains to be seen. There have been a couple of different leaks potentially pointing to what it could be, with one theory suggesting Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration. Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration was briefly advertised as an upcoming Epic Games Store free game on the French Epic Games page, with it listed as the June 3 free game. However, the June 3 free game turned out to be Frostpunk instead.
The advertisement had been pulled down rather quickly, which suggested that it could have been inaccurate. Perhaps Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration is never going to be a free game on the Epic Games Store, or maybe the leak simply had the date wrong. In the meantime, it wasn't the only potential free Epic Games Store game that was leaked, with another being Drug Dealer Simulator.
Right now, the prevailing theory is that Drug Dealer Simulator is the next free Epic Games Store game, but that has yet to be proven. Of course, it's always possible that the next Epic Games Store free game isn't Drug Dealer Simulator or Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration and is something completely unexpected instead. Epic Games Store users will simply have to wait for the current mystery game countdown to wrap up to find out what game they can claim next.
The goal with the Epic Games Store free mystery games is obviously to draw more people to the Epic Games Store, increasing the service's userbase and hopefully creating more buying customers. It's no coincidence that the free mystery games are coinciding with the Epic Mega Sale. When someone opens up the Epic Games Store launcher to see what the next free mystery game is, they could see a game on sale that they want and buy it. It makes a lot of sense from a marketing standpoint.
While it's always great to get free games, part of the appeal of the promotion is the fact that Epic Games Store users don't know what the next free game will be from one week to the next. Epic Games is keeping the free games a secret, advertising them as "mystery games" with a countdown that lets users know that they can always look forward to the next free game getting revealed each Thursday at 10am CT.
Since a lot of people enjoy guessing the next Epic Games Store free game and look forward to the reveals, they may be wondering how long this will last. Unfortunately for those who enjoy the mystery game, it seems likely that the promotion will be ending sooner rather than later.
The Epic Games Store free mystery games are being done as a way to promote the Epic Mega Sale. The Epic Mega Sale ends on June 17, which means it's highly likely that there will only be two more free mystery games for users to claim. One of those free games will come on June 10 and replace survival/city-builder game Frostpunk, and the other will be added on Thursday, June 17, and is likely to be the last free mystery game.
The Epic Games Store has given away free mystery games in the past, but only for a limited time. Around this time last year, Grand Theft Auto 5 was free on the Epic Games Store as part of a similar promotion. And in December of 2020, the Epic Games Store had an advent calendar counting down to Christmas, where the store gave away a free mystery game every day. It's quite possible that the Epic Games Store will bring back this advent calendar promotion this December, and there may be other special events where it does the free mystery games again as well.
When the Epic Games Store isn't giving away free mystery gamers, it lets users know what every free game will be ahead of time. Usually these games are a bit lower profile than the mystery games. It isn't every day that a video game storefront gives away blockbuster hits like NBA 2K21 and Grand Theft Auto 5, after all. Most of the Epic Games Store free games are smaller-scale indie games as opposed to triple-A releases, and these are the free games that aren't usually hyped as mystery games.
So while the Epic Games Store free mystery game promotion will likely end on June 17, there should still be plenty of free games given away through the service throughout 2021 and beyond.