Game studios offer a handful of free games every month but not all of them are worth filling your library with. Steam has a hefty collection of them. GOG and Epic Games does too. But sometimes these stores offer AA and even AAA titles for only a limited amount of time.
Epic Games gives away multiple games a week. If you’re not paying attention, you’ll lose out on a lot of quality PC games you could have kept forever. In this article, we’ll see how we can make this a smooth and easy affair so that you do not miss out on any freebies.
Free Epic Games Store games
Epic Games gives away free games every week; no need for a subscription. Head over to the Epic Games Store website or open the launcher, scroll down to the Free Games section, and hit the "Free Now" banner on the title you want. Then, go through the process as if you were purchasing the game. You won’t be charged, and the game will appear in your games library on the Epic Games launcher.
Epic Games gave away A Plague Tale: Innocence and Minit in early August 2021, for example. In the past, they have given away AAA titles like Grand Theft Auto 5 and Control for free.
Epic Games also has a great collection of free to play games like Rocket League, Fortnite, Genshin Impact and some exciting other ones worth trying. You can find them in the Free Games section.
Free GOG games
GOG doesn’t have regular giveaways as some other websites do, but when there is a free game to claim, you can grab it right from the front page of GOG.com. You will see a banner with a free game and countdown. Click the green button to claim the game.
GOG also has given away some cool games for free like Hitman: Absolution, Metro: Last Light Redux, ARMA: Cold War Assault and Syberia I & II etc. And then there is also Gwent: The Witcher Card Game, installing which will also get you a copy of The Witcher: Enhanced Edition.
In between giveaways, GOG always has a small collection of free games, which mainly comprises classic computer games that have been made available at no cost.
You can grab any of GOG’s free games by adding it to your cart and proceeding as if it were a normal purchase. The game will then be added to your account for $0. Standouts include Beneath a Steel Sky, Shadow Warrior, Postal, and several Ultima games.
Free Steam games
Steam rarely does giveaways and there is a reason why. Take a quick look at Steam’s most-played list and you’ll see that a significant proportion of the biggest games in the world happen to be free-to-play.
Steam has games like World of Warships, War Thunder, World of Tanks Rift, WarFrame, Star Trek Online, Albion Online, Eve Online, Dota Underlords, Dota 2, Smite, Paladins, Team Fortress 2 and many many exciting titles, including one of the greatest esports titles ever, CS:GO.
Free Microsoft Store games
Microsoft doesn’t usually give away games on the Microsoft Store, but there are a few titles the company has decided to make free moving forward (some you can find only on the web, and not the desktop app).
If you have a game code to redeem, sign in to your Microsoft Account, then enter the code at redeem.microsoft.com; from the web app, go to More > Redeem a code. If it’s a game for your Xbox console, you must first make sure remote install is set up on your console.
Currently, some of the notable free games are Crackdown 1 & 2, Farming Simulator 14 & 16 and Phantom Dust.
Free Origin games
Very rarely Origin also gives games for free. I have received games like NFS: Most Wanted 2013, Plant vs Zombies and even Mass Effect for free. So you have to wait for those specific times to grab some freebies.
Free Bethesda games
Bethesda really gives away games that much for free but some of the existing titles like The Elder Scrolls Arena & Daggerfall are free on their website.
In their game launcher, you can play Fallout: Shelter for free. They also do giveaways sometimes for games like Quake etc.
Free IndieGala Games
IndieGala is a digital storefront that mainly focuses on cheap Steam keys and game bundles, but also offers a selection of free games that can be claimed for a limited amount of time.
Select a title you wish to claim, then scroll down to the bottom of the game page and click the Add to Library button to lock the title to your account. You can then download the game to your desktop. There are some impressive titles like Mysterious Island 2, Still Life 2 and Yesterday Origins. You can look around for more that might interest you.
Free Itch.io Games
Tired of big blockbusters? Itch.io is a digital game store dedicated to indie titles you won’t find anywhere else. It offers plenty of free-to-play games, but some will even go on sale for 100% for a limited time.
Find a game you want to grab and click the Download or claim button. If you’re feeling generous, you can fork over a few bucks to the developer, but it’s completely optional for free games.
You can get the free game by clicking the No thanks, just take me to the downloads link and selecting Claim game to add it to your library. The game files are then made available to download.
One single app to claim all free games
As you can see, there are a lot of free games available all over the internet and claiming them is pretty tedious work. What if I say there is a remedy for all this rummaging around the internet. There is an app literally called ‘Free PC Games’ from the developers called The Golem.
The app gives you notifications every time there is a free game available anywhere on the internet including all the sources mentioned above. All you have to do is click on the notification and press Get Now and the app will take you to the webpage to get the game in just a few clicks. The app is available on both Android and iOS.
Other free games on the internet
Also, there are some games that are not available in any stores, such as League of Legends, Valorant, etc. For these games you have to the official websites directly, download the game client and from there you can get these games for free!
These are some of the ways to grab free games on the internet while keeping your bank account healthy.
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Header image via Epic Games / Bethesda.