Football Manager 2020 is free on the Epic Games Store this week

The Epic Games Store has a bit of a big hit on its hands when it comes to its regular weekly free games. Right now, it's offering Football Manager 2020 entirely for free up until 4pm on 24th September.

It's gone well for the management game already with over a million downloads achieved so far. The success story was reported by Miles Jacobson, series director, who announced on Twitter that one million players were achieved in a mere three days. To put that into context, Jacobson explained how that's several times the number they usually see when there's a free period on Steam for the game, "given the numbers, we'll have more people try out the game on EpicGames in 36 hours than we had with our Steam free fortnight across 2 weeks."

And, of course, this time around, the game is permanently yours if you use the Epic Games Store, rather than simply being a brief trial.

While it's not like Sports Interactive will be making anywhere near the money they would through individual sales, it's a smart move for the firm. Football Manager 2021 is currently delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic with no set release date just yet. 

Lure players in with the risk-free opportunity of playing Football Manager 2020 and we suspect some consumers will find themselves tempted by an updated version of the popular sports management game. There's simply no other football management game that goes anywhere near to rivalling the hit series in terms of scope or sheer entertainment, with the series almost always receiving great reviews each year. 

If you've been tempted for a while to dive into the series, this is clearly a good opportunity to do so. You've got until 24th September to download it to your Epic Games Store account. After then, the freebie switches over to RollerCoaster Tycoon 3. At the same time, you can also snap up Watch Dogs 2 for free which may be a good shout with Watch Dogs Legion arriving imminently.