PC gaming can be an expensive business, not least because of the punchy graphics hardware required to run the latest action titles. On the plus side, it’s never been easier to fill your storage with high-quality, well-known free PC games.
There are plenty of ways to pick up free PC games—and not those “free” titles that demand payment five minutes in, but genuinely free, full games that will never demand your credit card details.
Here’s how to pick up a wide selection of free games. So many, in fact, you’ll do well to even play them all!
Where Can I Get PC Games For Free?
The best way to stock up on a library of free games is to install the apps for the major games stores (which we’ll highlight below). These apps are free in themselves, although they may ask you to enter payment details even before they will let you download free games.
The games store apps you should install are:
Steam
Steam offers a huge selection of free games. The Steam Store has a free-to-play section where you’ll find familiar big-name titles such as Apex Legends, The Sims 4 and Destiny 2 among many others.
Most gamers will know you can get these big, blockbuster titles for free anyway, but if you scroll down the page you’ll discover the filters, allowing you to find the best free titles in your favorite genres, such as RPG, racing or adventure.
One tip is to sort the results by “top rated” using the link at the top of the table. Here, for example, you’ll find free gems such as Crusader Kings II, Risk:Global Domination and many more.
That free area can also be a great place to find dirt-cheap bargains. At the time of writing, for example, Valve’s brilliant The Orange Box, which contains the legendary Half-Life 2 (including Episodes 1 and 2), Team Fortress 2 and Portal for $1. Yes, that’s not free, but it’s as good as. (Mac players: beware that these 32-bit games won’t run on modern Apple Silicon Macs.)
Another top tip with Steam is to add paid-for games you like the look of to your wishlist. Once you’ve done that, you should get an email notification if that game is ever given away for free or if it’s part of a free-play weekend, say, where you can play it for a limited period. For some games, a weekend is plenty to scratch the itch.
The Epic Games Store
Epic Games is, of course, renowned for being the publisher of Fortnite, still one of the most-played free games on the planet. But you don’t need to be a Fortnite fan to benefit from free games courtesy of Epic.
The Epic Games Store app (available for PC and Mac) has a free games section, which has given away some brilliant titles over the years. Games that spring to mind include GTA V and Civilization VI—titles that will keep you gripped for tens of hours, even without investing in the DLC.
At the time of writing, Deus EX: Mankind Divided was one of the two featured free games that Epic promotes every week. That has an 84% score on Metacritic, which suggests it’s no pup if you’re into your cyberpunk role-playing games. It’s available for free until March 21.
Prime Gaming
Amazon’s Prime Gaming is definitely a poor relation compared to Steam or Epic Games. But it’s worth keeping an eye on for the occasional decent freebie.
You need to be an Amazon Prime member to claim the benefits, so it’s not free in the true sense of the word, although nobody’s buying Prime membership for the games, so you might consider it a free bonus for the fee you’re probably paying anyway.
At the time of writing, the best of the freebies on offer was Fallout 2, which is definitely a (nuclear) blast from the past, but a classic of its time.
Where To Keep Track Of Free PC Games
If you haven’t got time to keep tabs on the various games stores, Reddit will help you stay on top of free games offers.
The FreeGameFindings subreddit lists the latest offers from the various stores and handily labels when offers have expired, so that you don’t end up chasing freebies that have been withdrawn.
The subreddit has almost 350,000 “finders”, so there’s little chance a major freebie is going to escape their attention.