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What to post
This is a place to post limited-time giveaways of full video games that are then yours to keep forever at no cost. Please use the search to check what you're posting hasn't already been posted, and start your posts with [Source] or [Store via Source] so that people can ignore giveaways they're not interested in. For example, if Fanatical were giving away a Steam key for Pong, I'd title the post [Steam via Fanatical] Pong, the classic tennis sim.
Please copy the game's description (or at least the relevant bits) to the post body. If the game has an "AI Disclosure" then please include it in the post body too.
I post deals as I find them (sometimes spread out over a few days or bundled together so it doesn't get too noisy) but feel free to post them if you find them first.
If you have keys that you'd like to give away then !giftofgaming@lemmy.world is a better place to post.
Forever-Free Friday
The main exception to the limited-time giveaways only rule is for the occasional posting of games which are always free. On Fridays you can post a game that's permanently free if you think it's worth showcasing to everyone. Maybe it's a FOSS project, maybe it's a game that's gone free-to-play, just make sure that the post starts with [Forever-Free Friday] and that it's something worth playing and not just the publishers trying the freemium model instead!
Interesting links
Where to look for free game giveaways
- GOG Giveaway will show a current giveaway on GOG if there is one, or you can use this link to claim it in one click
- IndieGala Freebies and Showcase list freebies on IndieGala
- Freetchio and ItchClaim, tools showing anything 100% off on itch.io
- SteamDB Free Promotions and Free Packages list freebies (including DLC and free weekends) on Steam
- Epic Games lists freebies (including DLC and free-to-play games)
- IsThereAnyDeal lists freebies (including DLC) from various sources
- gg.deals and gg.deals news lists freebies (including DLC, free weekends, and game-adjacent giveaways) from various sources
- Epic Freebie Games Radar is an Android app which notifies about freebies (including DLC and game-adjacent giveaways) from various sources
Where to look for games which are always free
Subscriptions you may already have which give access to free games
Non-free but otherwise notable sales
Notifications
If you want notifications for new posts you can subscribe to the community's RSS feed, and if you want more granular notifications you can use Lootscraper to get site-specific RSS feeds and skip the need for this community entirely!
No such thing as a free lunch
Nothing is ever completely free, and there's a definite hierarchy to the kinds of giveaways posted here:
- Free open-source software is pretty hard to beat, it's the free-est lunch you can get!
- Indies being given away directly by their creators on sites like itch.io, they may ask you to pay what you want or message you about their other games but that's about it
- DRM-free storefronts like GOG, you can download the installer and keep it forever but obviously they're hoping that you'll start using their site for making actual purchases too
- Steam, Epic Games, IndieGala, Fanatical, Microsoft, Google Play, etc. will offer freebies which could theoretically disappear at any point (this doesn't happen often, but always remember that you don't really "own" most digital items), they also hope that giving freebies will encourage you to spend money on other games of theirs
- Subscriptions like Amazon Prime Gaming cost money but you do get to keep the games even after you cancel
- They offer free trials (supposedly only requiring a unique email) so you can sign up, claim all the games you want, then cancel
- This is basically where I draw the line as you can still keep games forever if you're willing to jump through the required hoops
- Subscriptions like Netflix, GamePass, PS+ and Switch Online are more like renting games, you lose access to them when you stop paying so I don't count them as free games even if you are somehow able to access them for free
- Freemium/pay-to-win games which you can play for free as a second-class citizen don't count, and they generally have enough marketing budget that you're aware of them without the need to have them posted here!
We're all adults here and I hope you don't need to be told to be wary of blindly installing dodgy software or not to support companies you don't like. If you don't want to see giveaways from a particular source and you use a Lemmy client which supports filters then you can block specific strings from showing, for instance if you didn't want to see anything from Amazon then you could hide the string Prime].
Keep it civil and keep it chill!