Correct, as an added bonus, they get to report X million monthly active users on top of that to their investors (that's why they make you come back every week for a new game). Likely at relatively little cost to them since they don't have to pay full price for those games.

It's probably still expensive as hell but when you have a competitor as big as Steam in the market, you gotta be able to afford some ammunition, and the Unreal Engine likely still brings in tons of cashflow.

Most of the free games are crap but they have on occasion given away absolute bangers (double- or even triple-A titles, although of course usually older titles or ones that didn't sell well). I recently got The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice for free (a game I wouldn't otherwise have bought or even known about), and I ended up having a very solid ~55 hours of fun with it. I still do all my buying either on Steam or GOG because I don't trust Epic and I hate their godforsaken launcher so I refuse to pay for anything that'll be tethered to it, but getting a free game of that caliber certainly made up for the pain of installing it.

Nah, pretty sure this isn't about the data. They just want to encourage people to go through the effort of setting up an account and downloading their launcher in the hopes that they can then later entice you to buy something else while you're there. Every time you run one of those free games they get to show you another offer, and since you're already signed up, the hurdle to buying something is far lower than it otherwise would have been.

Oh nooooo

As if corpos don't do the same when the Dems are in charge.

I found one in yo momma last night.

Very.

Don't forget yo momma's basement

That's an F-U in my book

Someone downvoted you for spitting facts? Interesting.

Certainly not the first time this has happened.

Thanks for noticing

This article is from 2010, grandpa. I used a DEW on your mom last night.