As a way to help promote its Mega Sale, the Epic Games Store is giving away free mystery games each week. The festivities started with a bombshell, as the Epic Games Store made Grand Theft Auto 5 available for free, triggering a rush to the Epic Games Launcher and actually causing it to crash for some time. Grand Theft Auto 5 is free for Epic Games Store users to claim and keep until May 21, at which point will be replaced by another free game. Nothing has been officially announced, but it's possible that the next three free games have leaked online.
If the rumors are true, the next free Epic Games Store game on May 21 is Civilization 6, followed by Borderlands: The Handsome Collection on May 28, and finally ending with Ark: Survival Evolved on June 4. All of these games are higher profile than the titles that Epic Games usually makes available for free on the Epic Games Store, and they should ensure even more users download the Epic Games Launcher. However, fans should take this information with a grain of salt as it's entirely possible this leak is fake and that the next set of free games will be completely different than what's listed here.
One of Epic's main strategies when it comes to convincing PC gamers to download the Epic Games Launcher has been to give away games for free, and this strategy has definitely been better received than some of the other things Epic Games has tried. However, Epic has suggested in the past that it will one day stop giving away free games, though it has so far not announced an end date for the program.
As far as Epic's other strategies, perhaps the most notorious is how the company has signed games to be Epic Games Store exclusives. This has upset Steam users and forced them to wait upwards of a year or more to get their hands on games that would have otherwise launched day one on the platform. Some may not see the big deal about having to use the Epic Games Store over Steam, but some PC gamers are invested in their Steam achievements and things like that, so it's definitely disappointing for them whenever a game is announced to be an Epic Games Store exclusive.
Epic Games Store exclusives are another thing that will supposedly be temporary, but also doesn't have any clear end date in sight. Right now, it seems Epic Games is still focused on trying to expand the user base of the Epic Games Launcher, which is a considerable undertaking considering the popularity of Steam.