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  • FREE GAMES: "Botany Manor" and "Poison Retro Set" [EPIC]

    From Spalls Hurgenson@[email protected] to comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action on Thu Feb 5 11:03:36 2026
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action


    It's Thursday, and that means free games from Epic. Don't trust any announcements about free games on Epic on any other days; those are
    just there to trick you by unscrupulous Internet Point thieves. This
    is the Real Deal (tm)!!!!!11!!1! ;-) ;-) ;-)


    * Botany Manor
    https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/botany-manor-e7c456
    This one is a first-person puzzle-game; sort of a more
    relaxed "The Witness" where the solution involves growing
    plants and not drawing lines. It's not that difficult and has
    a bit more story; the word 'cozy' is thrown around a lot in
    most reviews. It's fine, if that's your sort of game.


    * Retro Poison Set https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/pixel-gun-3d-poison-retro-set-55a7dd
    Not a game but some sort of add-on for Pixel Gun 3D
    (which is itself a free game, but it's always free). Meh.
    Normally I wouldn't even bother announcing this sort of thing,
    but if I don't somebody will try and pre-empt me, and those
    Internet Points are mine. Mine, mine, mine!!! ;-)



    I can't get too excited about these releases. Well, there's always
    next week. See you all in seven days for the next announcement!



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  • From Justisaur@[email protected] to comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action on Thu Feb 5 10:26:09 2026
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

    On 2/5/2026 8:03 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

    It's Thursday, and that means free games from Epic. Don't trust any announcements about free games on Epic on any other days; those are
    just there to trick you by unscrupulous Internet Point thieves. This
    is the Real Deal (tm)!!!!!11!!1! ;-) ;-) ;-)


    * Botany Manor
    https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/botany-manor-e7c456
    This one is a first-person puzzle-game; sort of a more

    No.

    * Retro Poison Set https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/pixel-gun-3d-poison-retro-set-55a7dd
    Not a game but some sort of add-on for Pixel Gun 3D
    (which is itself a free game, but it's always free). Meh.
    Normally I wouldn't even bother announcing this sort of thing,
    but if I don't somebody will try and pre-empt me, and those
    Internet Points are mine. Mine, mine, mine!!! ;-)

    They're giving away DLCs now, really scraping the bottom of the barrel here.
    --
    -Justisaur

    ø-ø
    (\_/)\
    `-'\ `--.___,
    ¶¬'\( ,_.-'
    \\
    ^'
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  • From Spalls Hurgenson@[email protected] to comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action on Thu Feb 5 13:44:02 2026
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

    On Thu, 5 Feb 2026 10:26:09 -0800, Justisaur <[email protected]>
    wrote:


    They're giving away DLCs now, really scraping the bottom of the barrel here.


    It's not really anything new; they've been doing that for years (that,
    and offering freemium titles as part of their weekly give-aways).
    Normally, I just don't announce those here though.

    But the quality of Epic's give-aways definitely has dropped over the
    past couple of years. You can hardly blame them, though. While Epic
    loves the how the program still attracts new users, this doesn't
    really convert into more revenue. People don't actually BUY stuff on
    EGS. In fact, recent studies show that games offered for free on Epic
    see an uptick in sales... but only on Steam. Epic is essentially
    paying the marketing fees for Valve's benefit.

    Which isn't to say it's completely useless to Epic. Having an
    increasing user-count is important when Epic advertises their store to developers. "Look how popular we are; we have 300 million users, up
    from 260 million users last year! Come sell your stuff on EGS!"

    But it isn't worth it to Epic to invest in any of the expensive
    AAA-games we all want. Not when cheapo Indie titles work just as well
    to drag in new users.


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