The gaming industry is full of great deals, perhaps more than ever before. While controversial trends like all-digital consoles have undermined consumer rights and savings in some ways (it's much harder to find used games these days, for example), there are also plenty of countless promotions, subscription services and full-blown free games. If you're a PC gamer, you've almost certainly already heard of Game Pass and the generous Epic Games Store giveaways, but you might not know Steam has regular own giveaways.
The service, if it can even really be called that, is commonly referred to as the Free-to-Keep promotion, and it's exactly what it sounds like: occasionally certain games will be marked as 100% off the uber-popular storefront for a limited time. But unlike, say, the Epic Games Store's free giveaways, these Free to Keep promotions aren't exactly issued on a regular basis, nor are they centralized and organized by Steam itself. Rather, they are initiated by the publishers of the games in question and are therefore a bit more inconsistent and low-profile than their counterparts on Epic, PS Plus, and so on.
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The Free-to-Keep distinction is important, as there are obviously a lot of video games on Steam that are free to play, such as Fortnite, Counter-Strike 2and Halo infinite (multiplayer). To be clear, the Free-to-Keep promotions in question here are limited-time offers run by game publishers where they literally give away one or a few titles at no cost whatsoever.
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There are basically no restrictions here either. As long as you have a Steam account and redeem the 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-price counterparts, although publishers may choose to offer lower tiers of their games rather than Deluxe Editions or something similar. That said, sometimes DLC is given away for free during these promotions as well.
A key difference between Steam's Free-to-Keep promotions and Epic Games Store giveaways, another no-strings-attached free program, is about motivation. Epic regularly gives away in-demand games to attract players to its platform, while Steam's Free-to-Keep offers are publisher-initiated and more about bringing players to individual games, rather than Steam as a platform. After all, Steam is already the most popular PC launcher, so Valve isn't incentivized to give away free content the way Epic is.
What Free-to-Keep games are available on Steam right now?
From now until April 23, Steam users can claim the following games for free:
- Sentience: The Android's Tale
- Legend of Keepers: Career of a Dungeon Manager
Sentience: The Android's Tale is a 2017 indie game that follows a newborn android exploring a broken and destroyed world. It puts a premium on player choice and control, with “at least a dozen possible endings.” It also aims to interrogate 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 oriented, dungeon crawling roguelite Legend of Keepers: Career of a Dungeon Manager may be more your speed. Coming from Goblinz Studio in 2021 and currently holding a comfortable Mostly Positive rating on Steam, Legend of Keepers is a tongue-in-cheek turn-based game where you hire awesome characters to fight alongside you, face terrifying monsters and upgrade units with special bonuses. There's also a smattering of tower defense, which helps keep the game interesting during its relatively short playing time.
Steam is also giving away Sanity Skin Pack for Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss—a promotion that ends on April 30.
