Earlier this year, Grand Theft Auto V was available for a free for a week, and A Total War Saga: Troy recently launched for free for 24 hours on Epic Games Store. When this page was initially written, there were two free games: the excellent co-op shooter-RPG Remnant: From the Ashes and indie adventure game The Alto Collection. They’re not no-name titles, either: they’re legitimately good free games. As long as you add the games to your library during their free period, they’re yours to keep. These days, Epic offers multiple free games a week. Why? Because Epic Games offers free games every week. If you play games on your PC, you should absolutely have Epic Games Launcher installed. Bottom line: money is always being made somewhere, even if you’re one of those free-to-play gamers who manages to never spend a cent, others are paying to cover the cost of the game’s continued support and ‘free-to-play’ status.

Other games like Star Wars: The Old Republic are free to play, but levelling up your character is slower than buying premium play time, and certain story content is locked behind a paywall. Basically, it’s an optional seasonal cost to unlock in-game items. It also uses a ‘Battle Pass’, which is a monetisation system you’ll find in other popular free-to-play titles like Dota 2 and Call of Duty: Warzone.

Fortnite makes money by charging for costumes and skins. Sometimes those games drop out of the library, too, and you never truly own them.įor free-to-play games, they are free to download and play, but there are usually incentives to spend money in game for either cosmetic items or a gameplay advantage (though the latter is frowned upon these days). In the case of subscription services like Xbox Game Pass for PC or EA Play Pro (formerly Origin Access Premier), you’re paying an ongoing monthly fee to access a library of games. Free games tend to be free because monetisation is tucked away somewhere else.

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