No Free Games

I've often heard "there's no free lunch" referring to the idea that free things often come with an unexpected cost elsewhere and I think the same theory applies with video games. Especially with my recent shift to more PC gaming, I'm seeing how "no free games" looks different between consoles and PC.

Nearly a decade ago, I wrote a post detailing the advantages and disadvantages of console gaming vs PC gaming. One of my biggest points was the availability of free games from the public library, as well as the ability to share games with friends. Now that I have more experience with PC gaming, and especially with the recent industry trend away from physical games in the form of key cards and consoles without disc drives, I wanted to revisit that idea. Specifically, how "free" games work on both PC and console.

My original point on the free availability of library games still stands, but I do want to hedge that a bit for the sake of transparency. My local library does still have a massive selection of video games available, including PS5 and Nintendo Switch 2 games, but there are some prerequisites before you can get those. First, you have to be a citizen of the county, which typically constitutes paying taxes to some degree. Hence, it isn't completely free as I did pay my taxes which fund the public library, but it's money that I would have to pay whether I utilized the library or not.

Beyond the complexity of whether tax-funded services could be considered "free," there are also some limitations and restrictions on those games. First, there is a limited selection containing only what the librarians have decided to purchase for circulation. This does include a lot of major releases and some indie titles, but it certainly isn't the full catalogue for a console, and it takes some time after a game releases before it is available to check out. If it's a popular game, you have to put in a hold and wait for a copy to be available. Then, when your copy is ready for pickup, you have to physically drive to a library location during their business hours. The library closest to me unfortunately also has the most restrictive hours of basically any location in the county. At the point that I put in a hold, I have to decide if I want proximity at the cost of availability.

Beyond library games, there is the more traditional option of letting a friend borrow games. Especially when video games at a public library are significantly less common of an option, more people are likely to be familiar with this mechanism of "free" game. It's great when a friend has a game you want to play and they're willing to let you borrow it, but have the same limitations of your friends owning the game you want (and having friends to begin with, for that matter). You can also keep the game for as long as your friend is willing to lend it, which could be longer than a standard library checkout, but it presumably isn't permanent. That's called "giving" you a game, not "lending" a game.

Those restrictions do complicate free games for consoles, but it is certainly something that most PC games can't accomplish. Long gone are the days when the primary method for purchasing a PC game was a disc or set of discs that you could let a friend borrow. Heck, many PCs today don't even have an optical drive (although that isn't exclusive to PC either now). The vast majority of PC games are purchased digitally, which severely limits their ability to be shared. Doesn't that mean that consoles still take the crown with availability of free games, even WITH the limitations?

Not so fast. PC gaming does have quite a few options for free games in its own right. The first source that I would be remiss to ignore is piracy and emulation. Legality aside, there are thousands of games available online for old (and even not-so-old) consoles. Plus, if you own the games on an old platform, you are legally allowed to back up your own physical media to digital, which would make them available on PC. However, we can ignore piracy and emulation, and there are STILL numerous ways to get lots of free games on PC.

The first thing I recommend for anyone looking to try PC gaming is to make an Epic Games account. Epic gives out one or more free games each week. You log in, claim them, and they're yours to keep for the life of the platform. A lot of people hate the Epic store as a platform, and I understand the frustrations, but that does not invalidate the availability of free games. I'll keep claiming the free games each week, even if I have to grit my teeth every time I open the Epic site.

Admittedly, Epic (like Steam) is only giving out a LICENSE for a game, not actual and permanent ownership of the game. If the company shuts down, you're losing access to all the games you claimed or bought on that store. One option to buy and OWN the game is GOG. These games are DRM-free AND you can download the offline installers of any games you own on the platform. GOG could shut down and you would still be able to play those games years into the future as long as you downloaded the installers. And don't tell me that GOG would just suddenly shut down without at least providing a notice and ample opportunity to back up your installers. CD PROJEKT is far too honest of a company to pull some shenanigans like that.

GOG is a store, though, where you can BUY games. This post is about free games, isn't it? If you're an Amazon Prime subscriber, you can get free games each week, some of which are on GOG. Obviously, a Prime subscription isn't free, but it may be a service you're already paying for and NOT taking full advantage of. Or, you might have a friend or coworker with Prime that would be willing to claim games and send the code to you. Thanks, Audra. You're the best. The benefit of these "free" games is that they're permanently yours once you claim them. You don't have to drive to pick them up, they aren't limited to business hours, and you don't have to return them either to the library or your friend after a period of time.

One possible PC answer to borrowing games from a friend is the Steam Family Library. If you create a Steam Family, you can add people and share those games with anyone in the same family. The games are limited to a single player per license simultaneously, but you also can't play more than one game at a time, so it's unlikely for two people to want to play the same game at the same time in many instances. This has been great for letting my kids play games without buying them on their respective accounts. It does require internet access to launch the game, and I believe that the owner can kick off a family member if they launch the game while it's being played, but it's certainly better than no option to share games. And if two members of the family want to play the same game at the same time, ANY two licenses will work. I bought my youngest a copy of Stardew Valley for his own account so we could play together, but any two members could use those licenses.

Between the free games for Amazon Prime subscribers and the weekly free games on Epic, I have nearly 300 games across Epic, GOG, and Amazon that I haven't paid a cent for. Sure, the Prime games do require a subscription from SOMEBODY to access, but the weekly Epic games you can claim with nothing more than a free account. If you have any interest in PC gaming, that's something you can do today without even having the hardware to play the games.

Clearly, "free" games on consoles AND PC come with their own restrictions and limitations, and I would go so far as to say there's no such thing as truly free games. I do appreciate being able to play a game without paying for it, especially when the developers do still get some form of support, and I'm willing to deal with some headache when it means I don't have to pony up for every title I try.