The gaming industry is full of great deals, perhaps more so than ever before. While controversial trends like all-digital consoles have in some ways undermined consumer rights and savings (it's much harder to find pre-owned games these days, for example), countless deals, subscription services, and full-fledged free games are also plentiful. If you're a PC gamer, you've almost certainly heard of Game Pass and the generous Epic Games Store giveaways, but you might not know that Steam has its own regular gifts.
The service, if it can even be called that, is generally referred to as a Free-to-Keep promotion, and it's exactly what it sounds like: occasionally, certain games in the popular uber store will be marked as 100% off for a limited time. But unlike, say, freebies in the Epic Games Store, these Free to Keep events aren't released on an exact regular basis, nor are they centralized and organized by Steam itself. Rather, they are initiated by the publishers of the games in question, and thus are a bit more inconsistent and less profiled than their equivalents on Epic, PS Plus, and so on.
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The Free-to-Keep distinction is important because there are of course a large number of free-to-keep video games on Steam, such as Fortnite, Counter-Strike 2and Halo Infinite (multiplayer). To be clear, the Free-to-Keep promotions listed here are limited-time offers run by game publishers where they literally give away one or more titles for absolutely free.
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There are essentially no strings here either. If you have a Steam account and redeem Free-to-Keep games within the promotional window, they will be added to your library just like any other game. There's nothing about Steam's Free-to-Keep games that are necessarily different from their full-fledged counterparts, although publishers may choose to offer lower-tier versions of their games rather than Deluxe Editions or the like. This means that sometimes DLC is given away for free during these events as well.
The key difference between Steam's Free-to-Keep promotions and Epic Games Store giveaways, another no-strings-attached free program, is the incentive. Epic regularly gives away in-demand games to attract players to its platform, while Steam's Free-to-Keep offers are publisher-initiated and drive players to individual games rather than Steam as a platform. After all, Steam is already the most popular launcher for PC, so Valve isn't incentivized to give away free content in the same way that Epic is.
What free games are available on Steam right now?
From now until April 23rd, Steam users can get the following games for free:
- Sentience: The Android Story
- Legend of Keepers: Dungeon Manager Career
Sentience: The Android Story is a 2017 indie game that follows a newborn android exploring a tattered and ruined world. It emphasizes player choice and control and boasts “at least a dozen possible endings”. It also aims to challenge the definitions of life and consciousness through its sci-fi narrative, and while its presentation is a bit archaic, its choice-based mechanics are admirable.
If you're looking for something a little more action-packed, a dungeon crawling roguelite Legend of Keepers: Dungeon Manager Career your speed may be higher. Coming from Goblinz Studio in 2021, it currently has a comfortable mostly positive rating on Steam, Legend of the Guardians is a turn-based game where you hire fantastic characters to fight by your side, face intimidating monsters and upgrade units with special bonuses. There's also a little tower defense that helps keep the game interesting throughout its relatively short run.
Steam is also giving away Sanity Skin Pack for Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss—promotion that ends April 30.
