Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, has acknowledged that while the company’s free game giveaways have been beneficial for business, many of its exclusivity deals were “not good investments.”

During a recent press call, Sweeney spoke openly about the Epic Games Store’s approach to user acquisition.

He admitted that although “a few of [its EGS exclusives] worked extremely well,” “a lot of them were not good investments.”

Meanwhile, he described the free games program as “just magical” and “very economical,” despite the initial impression that giving away games might seem “counterintuitive.”

“Giving away free games seems counterintuitive as a strategy, but companies spend money to acquire users into games,” Sweeney said.

“For about a quarter of the price that it costs to acquire users through Facebook ads or Google Search Ads, we can pay a game developer a lot of money for the right to distribute their game to our users, and we can bring in new users to the Epic Games Store at a very economical rate.

“You might think that this would hurt the sales prospects of games on the Epic Game Store, but developers who give away free games actually see an upsurge in the sale of their paid games on the store, just because their free game raises awareness,” Sweeney added.

“It’s so much that often developers, when they’re about to launch a new game, come to us wanting to work closely on a timed release of a free game, just to drive user awareness of their next game. That’s been an awesome thing. And it’s been by far the most cost-effective aspect of the Epic Games Store.”