Having read your post again, it’s my misunderstanding. But I disagree that it’s unsustainable or unhealthy for the ecosystem. It’s clearly a loss-leader design

Having read your post again, it’s my misunderstanding. But I disagree that it’s unsustainable or unhealthy for the ecosystem. It’s clearly a loss-leader designed to keep you engaging with the platform, yes, but it’s not necessarily worse for the developers or the platform than, say, a hugely-discounted Steam sale (or a subscription service like Gamepass). Also if Steam started giving away games like Epic do I’m pretty sure they’d be adored for it.