Epic Games Stores to Require 2FA when Claiming Free Games

Epic Games announced that two-factor authentication (2FA) will now be required periodically for people who claim free games from April 28 to May 21. The reasons for this particular decision are unclear, but any added layer of protection is welcome.

Other companies, including Epic Games, have been trying to convince users to adopt two-factor authentication for a long time, and they had some success. But the Epic Games Store appeared on the market much more recently than the others.

The store has a very aggressive marketing policy and offers free games regularly, trying to get a larger share of the pie. The new measure announced by the company will only apply to people trying to claim free games, which is a little bit weird.

When other stores chose to implement two-factor authentication, the measure applied to all the users and logins, but Epic Games is not doing the same.

“If you do not have two-factor authentication enabled on your account, you will see the following message when attempting to claim a free game: “Two Factor Authentication Required.””

“Claiming this free game requires you to have Two-Factor Authentication setup on your account. Two-Factor authentication provides an additional level of security to your Epic Games account and will help prevent unauthorized access.”

The security feature is available to everyone; it can be activated at any time, and have it enabled is recommended. Users who do have the security feature already enabled will sometimes be required to provide the codes when claiming new games.

While there”s no official reason for this particular security measure or the announced timeframe, it does arrive very soon after Nintendo asked people to enable two-factor on their devices, following a data leak that affected 160,000 accounts.

Even if the Epic Games gave users a time frame for their new security measure, it would be a good idea to keep two-factor enable at all times.