Do you want to play great games without paying a dime? So you have two options. You can go the illegal route and resort to Internet piracy for video games, or you can stay within the law and settle for free games, giveaway offers, and sweepstakes.
This sounds like a big commitment, but it really isn't. There are tons of great free games out there, and there are enough of them that you won't run out of games to play anytime soon. Some premium AAA games from 5-10 years ago are also available for free now too.
Will you be able to legally download mainstream games like Civilization V, Grand Theft Auto V or Destiny 2 for free? Probably not. But I guarantee that you will find at least one legally free game that you will enjoy using the following sites.
Steam is the go-to destination for digital gaming. Despite Valve's often awful customer service and relying on the hope that Steam will be available in the next few years, many users believe that Steam's huge selection of video games is worth it.
For free games, stick to the Free to Play section of Steam. You can filter by genre, by category, by features, and by operating system. You can also view by New Releases, Most Popular, and Coming Soon. Or you can narrow it down with a search term.
At the time of this writing, Steam's Free to Play section has just shy of 3,200 games.. Even if you gave each game just an hour of your time, that would equate to a full 133 days of entertainment, and many of these games are fantastic, including Dota 2, Paladins, Brawlhalla, Duelyst, Path of Exile, and Warframe.
You can also check out the Demos section of Steam, which currently has over 2,400 demo games you can try to see if the full game is worth spending money on.
Until the indie gaming renaissance of the late 2000s, indie games had a terrible reputation for being buggy, ugly, and boring. They were good as filler games to play when you needed to kill time between "real" games, and that was it.
Today, indie games are some of the best games around. Think of Undertale, Path of Exile, Braid, Spelunky, and The Binding of Isaac - all games created by individual developers or small development teams.
And we're starting to see more high-quality indie games on the market, which is why itch.io It is such an impressive platform. It specializes in indie games, both paid and free, and has grown quite a bit since its debut in 2013.
itch.io's free section has over 126,000 titles.. Not all of them are good, of course, but there are plenty of diamonds to be found in the rough. If you're tired of big game studios killing the industry, these indie games might be the perfect way to rekindle your love of gaming.
There are many reasons why you might not want to buy games on Steam, but the biggest reason is that Steam games have DRM. If Steam ever closes or bans your account for any reason, you will lose access to all games you have purchased.
This is why many players prefer to use GOG on Steam whenever the situation allows. GOG is a game distribution platform like Steam, but all of their games are DRM free, their games are not tied to your GOG account, so even if GOG shuts down, you will still have access to the games you downloaded. Most of the games on GOG can also be played on Linux, which is a nice bonus if you're into that sort of thing.
The drawback is that the size of GOG's library isn't even close to what Steam offers. The total size of GOG's library is just over 2,700 games, and the GOG Free section only contains around 70 games as of this writing. GOG is better if you have some money available because their under $5 section has a lot more games.
Twitch Prime is one of the many amazing benefits of an Amazon Prime membership. Of course, Amazon Prime itself isn't free, but if you're already a subscriber for other reasons, then Twitch Prime is essentially a free perk you can take advantage of.
In this case, the benefit of Twitch Prime is that Commercial games are made free to download every month. .
These are limited time offers, so you'll need to check in every so often and claim the free games as they become available. Previous games once available include Telltale's The Walking Dead, Psychonauts, SteamWorld Dig 2, Shadow Tactics, Superhot, and more.
Maybe you are not satisfied with the previous platforms, and that's okay. There are a handful of other ways to find high-quality games that cost nothing to download and play; they just won't be as easy to acquire..
I recommend starting with the Wikipedia page on commercial games released as freeware. Sort by year to find the most recent (older games may not be compatible with modern operating systems). I also recommend /r/FreeGames and /r/FreeGamesOnSteam on Reddit for all kinds of free deals and offers.
Other notable platforms include IndieDB (a database of indie games in development) and ModDB (a database of game mods in development and indie games).
And finally, if you're okay with almost free, but not quite, then you should check out the Humble Store, which has a ton of discounted games, and the Humble Bundle, which is a monthly payment. -You want premium game pack. They both provide DRM free games! 6 Places To Buy DRM-Free Games [MUO Games] 6 Places To Buy DRM-Free Games [MUO Games] Since I decided not to buy Steam games, I need to find other sources. Many of them are actually worse than Steam. The Ubisoft store is bewildering and full of annoying DRM. Electronic Art's… Read more
