One of the ways the Epic Games Store has enticed players has been its continued free games given out to users every single week. As this continued into 2020, a small change is coming to the process of claiming those freebies.

From now until 21st May, going to claim free games without two-factor authentication (2FA) enabled will produce a message stating that 2FA increases your security and will be needed.

“In order to enable two-factor authentication, please head over to your Epic Games Account settings. Two-factor authentication can be used to help protect your account from unauthorized access by requiring you to enter a security code when you sign in. You can read a full how-to guide on enabling two-factor authentication here,” reads an announcement.

After 21st May 2FA will be required when claiming free games “periodically”. At the time of writing there has been no clarification on how often this will be.

We’re also not sure why this will be required for the coming weeks and then changed over to period checks in the future. We can only assume that, after this period, users will simply leave 2FA activated indefinitely. We believe this is known as the “free trial” approach.

Aside from increasing the security of your account, which is an objectively good thing, we imagine that there’s some benefits for the store too. Preventing bot accounts from hoovering up free games (with the intention to sell the account later) is one reason.

While these free games are great, they are limited-time offers. Buying a bot account like this is one way people could get access to the those games aside from, you know, just spending that money to legally buy the game.

Regardless of this Epic Games does concede that the change is a “minor inconvenience“, but it also looks to be a necessary evil.