Over the past few months, the iLL Staff have noticed that the number of massive giveaways of Steam redeemable game keys has grown exponentially. By Massive Giveaways, we mean those with a minimum of 10,000 keys, which is a significant enough quantity for many people to be able to claim them easily. No need to worry about those pesky ‘Key Stealing Bots’ snatching up your ‘rightful’ game key within milliseconds of it being published to the world.
So we wondered, is the supply of free games just enough for someone to be able to game for free through legitimate means on the PC? We are aware that Sony and Microsoft both offer some free* games with a monthly subscription to their online services, but those don’t count as you are paying a subscription fee not only to claim them, but also to continue being able to play them. Hence the asterisk. Steam Keys however, are tied to your account and can allow you to play offline without issue. Also, there are no charges for playing Online Multiplayer on the PC. While some may argue that Steam itself is a form of benevolent DRM, we aren’t looking at free from that freedom point of view, but rather from a monetary viewpoint.
What’s Free on Steam?
Steam has a good selection (multiple pages worth) of free-to-play games that is increasing by the day, but few of them are actually fair with their game design so that the free players can choose to remain so, without having to grind for hours or to fork out money to progress. There are a few rare gems like Team Fortress 2, Dota 2 and Path of Exile that manage to get this right, to the point that you might feel compelled to spend money on them for the hours of entertainment you get. While you can game for free with such free-to-play games and even try the rest of the pay-to-win ones until you hit that paywall of disinterest, this iLLvestigation is not about that.
The games we are talking about are those still being sold in the Steam Store. We haven’t counted the games that went free thanks to the magnanimity of their creators simply because they figured there was no future sales hope for them. We focused solely on the Steam redeemable games, since those looking for free legitimate games have other options like EA’s Origin and GOG.com too. The choice of keeping the focus on Steam was simply because these promotions aren’t sponsored by the owners of Steam, Valve themselves, and also due to the fact that it is the largest player in the market.
How was this iLLvestigation conducted?
iLLGaming started a three-month project from October 1, 2014 until December 31, 2014 with the author, Chirantan Raut and reviewer Anikait Makkar to measure just how many free games one could accrue on a new steam account in this time period. Anikait was the perfect test subject to operate this account and redeem the games simply because he was new to Steam and PC Gaming, having been playing exclusively on the Xbox 360. This meant that we were not only able to record which games we got for free, but also the ease of getting them for a total novice to Steam.
By the end of our project, Anikait had become proficient for sniffing out and redeeming free games from giveaways himself. He was so pleased with the Steam experience that he chose to invest in some new games in the Steam Winter Sale. During the course of the project, it was our author that found about, filtered and passed on the giveaways to Anikait, and helped him with redeeming the games. Some giveaways even required guidance over Teamviewer, though for the sake of keeping things fair, Anikait performed all the actions himself.
After the end of the redemption phase of the project, it was time to get to the fun part namely, playing the games acquired for free. We also considered the score of steam user reviews and Metascores, if any, that the game received for the purpose of rating the games. We now present the results of our iLLvestigation in the following lines.
The Freebies
The basic criteria for choosing the games in this list was that each game must be available worldwide, with at least 10,000 keys to provide a decent chance for a newbie to snag a copy. The games must also not be free due to a price glitch or exploited through a loophole or require having to use a proxy or VPN to acquire. In short, legitimate free games acquired through legitimate means.
What if I want more freebies?
Besides the giveaways covered here, we found that there were quite a few more freebies on offer is one knew where to look. Game outlets and journalists hold smaller giveaways over social media like Twitter and Facebook. Origin has an ‘On the House’ program where they offer classic EA titles for free for a period of a few weeks, which are yours to keep if you redeem them on your Origin account. GOG.com also offers free games on their site from time to time. There are also giveaway sites for Steam Keys and Gifts like steamgifts.com, playblink.com, steamcompanion.com and galagiveaways.com, though one has to be careful about fake giveaways from people who haven’t read the rules or region locked gifts that steam is now enforcing on buyers of certain regions worldwide.
People also tend to drop extras from bundles in the forums and communities they frequent, though they tend to prefer the more active contributors to be rewarded, rather than the silent stalkers and ‘ninjas’ who show no gratitude. Such folks are also called leeches and are universally disliked, so you should always remember to acknowledge and thank the generous donors of such drops. Major Publishers also tend to have a promotion exercise called Free Key Fridays, where they give away games and merchandise on Fridays on their social media. Even Indie Developers can occasionally drop a few keys to their fans. Reddit also has some dedicated subreddits for giveaways such as /r/GiftofGames and /r/RandomActsofGaming. There’s even /r/FreeGameFindings where the latest massive giveaways are usually listed.
Chasing after all these giveaways however, is folly since you will be left with little time to enjoy what you’ve won. Given how probability and internet speeds work, you are likely to snag more freebies the more time you dedicate to getting them, though you can’t catch them all. It’s better to be content enjoying what you have than to lust unsuccessfully in pursuit of what you haven’t hoarded yet. You will come to a point where your time spent is worth more than the money you are ‘saving’.
Why are there so many giveaways now?
We believe that the advent of Greenlight led to many average indie titles making it on to the Steam platform. Indie developers today rely a lot on revenue from bundles and sales, especially when their title isn’t quite critically acclaimed. Massive Giveaways are a promotion attempt to get your game to as large an audience as possible since these are usually conducted in association with a store or bundle. They can be used to promote a sequel in a popular franchise too like we saw with Metro 2033 being given away to market Metro Last Light. Even Valve has jumped on this bandwagon by having one of its titles like Left 4 Dead 2 becoming freely redeemable for 24hrs in the 2013 Winter Sale.
Steam’s Greenlight system has also led to the rise of makers of sub-par games that aren’t pulling enough votes offering free steam keys for the voters once they get greenlit. This led to the rise of sites like whosgamingnow.net though Valve has pulled the plug on this practice to reduce the number of substandard games and maintain a minimum level of quality in its store. The typical lifecycle for such games usually involves making the free key for vote promise to get on Steam, or joining a greenlight bundle to make that promise indirectly, then launching on Steam after being greenlit, then adding trading cards to the game to make a few gullible collectors buy it, then either going on a steeply discounted sale or becoming part of an indie bundle and finally ending up as one of these massive giveaways used to promote a bundle site or the developer’s next game.
Offering freebies is an old marketing trick and one shouldn’t be surprised that it has made its way to the video games marketplace. Preorder bonuses are another form of this enticement. One must remember that there will always be a price to be paid for any product that is given for free, since investment has been made to create that product.
What does this have to do with Piracy?
Pirates usually want to get their games without paying for them monetarily. Piracy can be acceptable in very rare cases such as censorship in certain countries (*cough* Dragon Age Inquisition in India *cough) where the developers themselves encourage it at times. Some rare games that you can’t find a legitimate copy of to buy are available by resorting to piracy. Some games can even have legitimate owners resorting to piracy simply to have a better gaming experience thanks to some draconian DRM. There may be folks who can’t afford to buy the game now but will do so once they are able, but that’s a reason to learn frugality and patience rather than resorting to piracy. Then there are those who can afford really expensive machines to game on, and pay money for seedboxes to pirate games, yet they refuse to support the industry that provides them this source of wonderful entertainment. This article is not meant for those hypocrites, but rather for those poor souls who desire entertainment, yet cannot afford the price it commands. Those who love to game.
When you can derive so many hours of quality entertainment for free, why would you need to pirate? There are experiences beyond AAA games that can appeal more to you. There are massive sales on Steam and there are bundles that can let you quickly amass a backlog of games for cheap. There is no compulsion to play a game at launch. Strictly speaking, with the current industry practices of patching after launch and cutting away content as DLC, it makes more sense to enjoy a game once it is released as a ‘complete’ edition. That way you get to savour a bug free and content rich experience as originally envisioned by the developer.
If that doesn’t sate your thirst for gaming, remember that there are many freeware independent game projects that can be charming and fun, though some may lack the polish of a for-profit effort. There are decades old abandonware games that have some great gameplay despite the dated visuals. Seek and ye shall find the freebies.
Conclusion
We were surprised that three months could yield us at least 28 free games, which are more than what PSN, or Xbox Live Gold Subscriptions offer. Some of these included AAA titles though such promotions are few and far between. However, we must consider quality as much as quantity. The quality of the freebies is usually mediocre though there is the occasional gem that you find. Some are so bad that you wonder why you even bothered to get them for free. The games are distributed across various genres so gamers who like to try a bit of everything, will find the maximum enjoyment. Many promotions are easy to take advantage of though, so even novices to steam should be able to obtain them. One can always seek help on the internet if stuck, if one is willing to. Quite a lot of giveaways require the use of social media accounts, email addresses and/or an account on the giveaway site, so this might concern those with privacy qualms, though this is the price you pay for the free game.
Looking at the selection and amount of games we snagged for free, and considering the various other avenues available to acquire even more games for free or as smart sale and bundle purchases, we do believe one can game for free without resorting to piracy even if one is financially handicapped to afford buying the newest games. If you can afford an internet connection accessible through a basic gaming capable PC, you can easily achieve this accumulation of free games without resorting to piracy. Did we mention that there are Linux versions available for a lot of these freebies? Game for free legitimately. It’s possible on PC.
