There’s finally a way to gift games purchased on the Epic Games Store. Epic has announced that it is now possible to gift digital games through the Epic Games Store, provided the person you are sending them to has an Epic Games account.
On the game’s store page, you’ll now see a gift button below the normal Buy Now button. Clicking this will ask you to log into your Epic account if you haven’t already done so, and will then ask you to log into the Epic account of whoever you’re sending the game to, choose a message from a selection of pre-written messages, and then select the date you want the gift to “arrive.”
That’s the menu that appears when you buy a game as a gift. (Ian Carlos Campbell for Engadget)
Epic says that if the person you’re sending the game to already has the game, you’ll be automatically refunded. If the other person chooses to decline the gift, you’ll get your money back as well. However, not every purchase on the Epic Games Store can be gifted. Free games, subscriptions, “pre-purchase offers” and in-game currency are excluded.
Gifting is a basic feature of the online store, so on some level it’s more surprising that the Epic Games Store didn’t have this feature, rather than that gifting is being added now. One reason for this may be that much of Epic’s focus for its digital store has been on reducing the fees of both Steam and the Apple App Store.
For example, in May, the company announced that it would not take a cut of the first $1,000,000 of an app’s revenue, after which it would only take a 12 percent cut. This weakens both Apple and Valve’s financial arrangements with developers. Epic also regularly offers free games through its Game Store to entice new users, something it plans to continue with its mobile app store as well.