It's like one of those shareware games...
*Pay 10 bucks to remove DRM and actually own the game*

^
This is literally the business model, people paying out the ass for low effort releases that only release here after the goods have been gotten elsewhere.

Since the devs get paid for every game Epic gives away, I'm pretty sure they will make their fair cut (why else would they sign the contract?).

As to why Epic/Tencent are doing this?

1) They still hope to surpass Steam as the #1 store for digital games (if it's paying off for them (in the end), only they can know).
Either way:
2) Financial losses of businesses can be written off. They don't really lose money.

User acquisition

It's been their main goal since day 1, the problem they face is turning gree users to paying users. Every giveaway is purely down to user acquisition and flipping to those obtained users to paying users. Epic has a tough job doing that. If i recall their buying user conversion rate was less then 10%, maybe even less than 6%. But in the eyes of certain corner, it's at least a obtained user who may go on to purchase things at some point

This, user base and brand recognition is probably more important in modern market than profit itself.

Also, every game they give away is one less game sold through Vapour (and GOG). Not exactly 1 to 1 ratio of course, but plenty of people do actually browse the Epic library before buying games.
Having and running the launcher instead of "I don't like FortCraft anymore so will uninstall the launcher forever" is a excelent way to make people play their games. And lastly, the less said people will spend on single player games the more micro$ will be bought.

It seems to be working very well, since they went from 6 months -> 1 year -> forever weekly giveaway.

Edit: Seems to be working pretty well the 2nd, since Vapour is giving away hardware to try lock people there. GOG will suffer the most :(

Yeah, what timing, right?

I highly disagree with the idea your company can live on 'brand recognition' over profit, that's crazy. You can't pay your staff with brand recognition. It is vital, however, hence why social media and comms to customers are vital!

Insurmountable was something that I was possibly interested in but not enough to buy without a demo to try it out. Unfortunately, there is no demo.

I've just downloaded and tested the version that Epic is giving away. If you try to run it outside of Epic's launcher, it gives you a black screen with large text prompting you to login with Epic to authenticate the game... so thanks Epic for releasing a very extensive demo. I'll still use their version to try the game out and see if I like it or not.

If I do like Insurmountable, I'll just buy it here.

Epic probably gave them way more money that they thought they'd make.

Me too, but wasn't Twitter or something that loss money every year (high sums) until a couple of years ago?

Anyway the game looks actually fun, like a baby from Death Strandig + FrostPunk.

Has anyone tried the game yet?

Sadly my effort only went so far to open their crappy browsers/launcher and claim the game and Xcom2 even though I've already got that one here.

23:32

Yeah, I like it, but the camera is awful. :/