“Epic Games” Is Luring Customers to Enable Two-Factor Authentication by Offering Free Games

• Customers of “Epic Games” are called to enable two-factor authentication on their accounts.
• The gaming company is likely experiencing or expecting a sudden player-base growth, and they’re taking protective action.
• The online platform is offering a range of 2FA methods, from SMS to email, and support for authentication apps.

Epic Games, the American video game developer and publisher known for the Fortnite “battle royale” game, is now looking to push all players to activate two-factor authentication on their accounts. To lure them into doing it, they are offering free games that can be claimed on the Epic Games Store. This form of encouragement is maybe the best approach to take, and Epic Games is defining the period of account protection strengthening from today until May 21, 2020. That said, if you are a customer of Epic Games, go ahead and enable 2FA right now.

To do this, go to epicgames.com, login, hop to the “account settings,” then click on the “password and security” tab, and enable two-factor authentication. This action will require to fill in your mobile phone number, and from then on, you will have to enter a confirmation code to log in to the Epic Games platform. The gaming publisher admits that this may be an inconvenience for some, but it’s the best way to protect their accounts from unauthorized access. We don’t even need to elaborate on this further, as the standard security practice is to enable 2FA wherever this is possible.

Source: Epic Games

Source: Epic Games

The two-factor authentication step will appear the first time you sign in after enabling the feature, when you try to login from a new device, after 30 days since your last sign in, and whenever your browser cookies are cleared. So, you won’t have to go through the process every time, and that’s good. For more convenience, Epic Games also supports the use of email authentication (for verified addresses only), or app-based 2FA through “Google Authenticator”, “LastPass Authenticator”, “Microsoft Authenticator”, or “Authy”. While every option has its pros and cons, we would suggest that you use an authentication application instead of the SMS or the email method.

Epic Games has recently decided to release its hit title, Fortnite, on the Google Play Store, so they may anticipate a massive influx of new users. Maybe this is precisely why they feel that they need to take additional steps to convince their growing customer-base to activate 2FA steps, as any security incidents from stuffing attacks could very easily harm their reputation. Speaking of which, they already have some dark spots in their history, as one of the biggest investors in the company is the Chinese “Tencent,” a controversial entity belonging to a group that Google is not so open to doing business with.