The best free games on Steam

Looking for the best free Steam games? Of course you are. A wise man once said, "the best things in life are free, now I've discovered what Steam games mean to me," and you know what? He was right. Steam has plenty of games on its platform that want your hard-earned dollars and cents, but some of the best and most popular games on there don't need a penny to play.

These are the games you can install and start playing without spending a cent (or penny, or peso). Some of them are games you can spend money on, if you get really into it, while others are free from top to bottom, but they're all the best free Steam games you can cram onto your hard drive in 2024.

There are free-to-play heavyweights in online games like Apex Legends and Dota 2, of course, but there are fertile fields of indie games to work with too. We've rounded up a list of the best games you can add to your Steam library entirely free. 

The free games section includes games the are free from top to bottom. You download the game and play it without any microtransactions or extra strings. There might be DLC available, but you can get the full core experience just by downloading the game. Here's where you'll mostly find the short indie games and wacky experimental projects.

The free-to-play section contains games that are supported by in-game microtransactions. Here live the bigger games like Destiny 2 and The Sims 4 that, while free, will definitely attempt to shake a bit of cash from your pockets. We've considered the fairness of the in-game stores when selecting these games, and believe you can get a lot of fun out of them before you put in credit card details.

Best Free Steam Games

Straftat

Link: Steam

Straftat (or, more accurately, STRAFTAT) is bizarre. A deliberately lo-fi, off-kilter thing about lightning-quick, 1v1 FPS duels, it's eaten a whole lot of hours at the PCG offices since it released last October. With over 70 imaginative maps, the whole thing is consistently fresh even if you put, ahem, a lot of hours into it. Not that we'd know anything about that.

You can find a big ol' write-up of Straftat from one of PCG's resident FPS-lovers, Ted Litchfield, right here.

The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog

Link: Steam

Sonic the Hedgehog is dead. Murdered. And the culprit remains at large. Across a short, comedic visual novel that Sega dropped out of the blue for April Fool's Day 2023, your job is to catch the killer. Released as a joke, the game somehow became Sega's best-rated Sonic game on PC, and it's one of the best free Steam games you can play today.

Metropolis 1998 (Demo)

Link: Steam

Okay, hear me out: this is just a demo, rather than a totally free game, but since the actual full version isn't even out yet, I'm sticking it on the list until it exists in a paid-for form. This is a throwback city builder that'll resurrect all your most treasured memories of SimCities past, but it's got some advanced features tucked away in there. For one thing, it lets you design and decorate every building in town, so you can really let your inner interior (and exterior) decorator shine. Plus, it has a really fantastic, complex simulation system for your little citizens. They even take lunch breaks!

You can find a longer write-up of Metropolis 1998 from PCG's city-builder czar Chris Livingston right here.

OpenTTD

Link: Steam

OpenTTD is a rather old open source remake of an even older sim game and it's still excellent in its Steam release. It remains plenty popular among fans of transport and management sims and for good reason. Despite looking relatively simple, it has a pretty deep simulation, including things like acceleration and torque for trains going uphill. It's also easily moddable, meaning there are all sorts of delights to expand the simulation with.

Grimm's Hollow

Link: Steam

Love Undertale? Love purple? Love Death not as a concept but as an anthropomorphised little guy? Then you'll love Grimm's Hollow, a free RPG that sees you take up the scythe of a newly hired Grim Reaper. With great art and a surprisingly deep battle system, the game tells a short and moving tale about life, loss, and the consumption of cookies.

The Looker

Link: Steam

The Witness, but it doesn't feel like someone's cornered you at a party. This first-person puzzler is a surreal, irreverent take on Jonathan Blow's opus, with a narrative made up of audio logs that quickly devolve into sheer absurdity. It's only two hours(ish), and the puzzles are genuinely clever. It's definitely worth your time, especially if, like me, you eventually just played The Witness with the volume turned down.

Doki Doki Literature Club!

Link: Steam

It may look like a cheerful classroom drama but don't be fooled, Doki Doki Literature Club! plays with that facade. Sedate chats with classmates create a languid impression for the first act or so, but dark twists await—there's a reason the game opens with a content warning. If you end up enjoying it then you might also like Pony Island and Undertale. 

Crusader Kings 2

Link: Steam

Everyone and their grandma has strong opinions about Victoria 3 and Stellaris these days, but it was Crusader Kings 2 that properly catapulted Paradox into the limelight. Free on Steam since 2019, Crusader Kings 2 is as much RPG as it is a strategy game: You take on the role of one of thousands of historical aristocrats (and then their heirs, and their heirs, and so on) starting at any date from 769 CE to 1337 CE, and you can play pretty much however you want. 

Notionally, you're supposed to be securing your legacy, expanding your territory, and fighting for the glory of your dynasty, but you really can pick any goal you want. Fancy abducting the Pope? Go for it. Desperate to seduce the Queen of France? Fill your boots. The medieval world is your oyster.

CK2 has a vast library of DLC, all of which costs money, but the base experience is totally free and still capable of sucking up hours upon hours of your time.

Emily is Away

Link: Steam

Return to those halcyon teenage days before Facebook, before Instagram, hell, even before smartphones. Emily is Away is an interactive story told entirely through a reproduction of AOL Instant Messenger: A name that will spark pangs of nostalgia in readers of a certain age and total incomprehension in everyone else. You don't need to be aged and grey to enjoy the story, though, which sees you cultivate a relationship with fellow high school student Emily across the internet in a branching narrative.

Deltarune

Link: Steam 

The quasi-sequel to Undertale has both of its first two chapters available completely free to grab. An episodic RPG with creative battle mechanics that see you dodging enemy bullets in real time, it has new characters, as well as the return of favorites from Undertale like Sans and Toriel. Future chapters will release eventually, and are supposed to be paid, but you can enjoy the first two for free now.

Best Free-to-Play Steam Games

Link: Steam

Hot out of NetEase, Once Human is a survival MMO set in—get this—a post-apocalyptic future. Okay, yes, you've heard that one before, but people are into this one and it scored a very healthy 84% in PC Gamer's Once Human review. "It's like a less cartoony, more fully-fleshed out version of creature collector Palworld," wrote reviewer Heather Newman, "in that it throws everything people like from other games into one giant bucket."

Plus, it does mix things up a little with its setting. It's heavily Lovecraft-inspired, so there are all sorts of creepy beasties roaming the land as you try to scavenge weapons, resources, and the bits and bobs you need to build a base. That includes a wandering bus-on-legs you can hunt down to nab rare gear. Does Fallout have a wandering bus-on-legs? It does not.

Apex Legends

Link: Steam

The ever-popular hero shooter from Respawn and EA has been around for a few years now, and shows no signs of slowing down. Oriented around squad-based play, Apex is a smart, strategic, and downright fun shooter that PCG's James Davenport called "the best battle royale available today" when it came out.

The Finals

Link: Steam

From ex-Battlefield devs at Embark Studios, The Finals is a chaotic, calamitous, team-based multiplayer shooter that sees squads of three vie to amass as much as cash as possible to win the game. It can be pretty sweaty: a high time-to-kill and the brittleness of its lighter classes demands you either stick to your squad or play very well indeed to rack up a killcount, but don't worry: it also contains perhaps the highest potential for sheer, unbridled madness I've ever seen in a multiplayer FPS.

Why? Because every building in The Finals' myriad levels is gloriously destructible. Grenades, C4, rocket launchers and plenty else besides is capable of making roofs collapse, floors give away, and walls fall in. Got an enemy squad setting up an ambush on the floor above? Bring them down to your level with well placed explosive charge. Or just flip the whole Monopoly board by turning an entire building to rubble. It's great fun even if you aren't brilliant at the game, and you can do it for free.

The Sims 4

Link: Steam 

It's The Sims, probably the most iconic life-simulator ever made, and it's free on Steam. The Sims 4's base game has been free on Steam since October 2022, letting all and sundry try their hand at building a dream dollhouse/subjecting innocent virtual people to unimaginable horrors. Lead a life of crime, raise a family, or, yeah, just stick 'em all in the pool and take away the ladder. The possibilities really are endless. And hey, if honest living gets too much, why not check out our list of Sims 4 cheats?

Destiny 2

Link: Steam 

Bungie's multiplayer space shooter is free to play these days which means you can hop into a fireteam for free. It's got all the good gunplay you know Bungie for and regular content updates and new modes to keep you busy. If you're looking to get started for the first time, we've got a Destiny 2 beginners guide, and a refresher on what's going on right now can be found in the Destiny 2 roadmap.

Fallout Shelter

Link: Steam 

With the Fallout TV show making waves, there's no better time to get into Bethesda's Vault-management sim Fallout Shelter. Unlike the RPGs you probably think of when it comes to the series, Fallout Shelter sets you up as a Vault overseer ministering to the needs and neuroses of your home's inhabitants. Think The Sims meets XCOM's base-management system and you're, well, a little bit of the way there.

Marvel Snap

Link: Steam

Engrossing enough to be classed as a controlled substance, Marvel Snap is a superhero-themed card battler that you can easily lose hours to. It's one of the hottest card games going right now, a real minute-to-learn, lifetime-to-master deal, and it rewards well-thought-out deck building and careful strategy. You can do yourself a favour, though, and check out the things we wish we'd known before we started playing Marvel Snap before you pick it up. There's no need for you to repeat our rookie mistakes.

Guild Wars 2

Link: Steam

Our best ongoing game of 2022 is free-to-play and going strong over ten years after release. An MMORPG with a vast open world and a dedicated community, Guild Wars 2 offers character customisation, a whole bunch of professions (or classes, to you and me), and rich PvP. It's still getting frequent updates and expansions, too, though you'll have to pay for the latter (sorry!).

Goose Goose Duck

Link: Steam

Popularised by a stream from a K-Pop superstar, Goose Goose Duck is an Among Us-like that trades in waddling spacemen for, well, geese and ducks. It has quite a few more modes to offer than Among Us, though, so it's attracted thousands of players who grew tired of running the same old playbook in countless games of its space-based predecessor. Deceive your friends! Foil your enemies! Quack!

Counter-Strike 2

Link: Steam

Heck, man, it's Counter-Strike. If there were a Mount Rushmore of foundational multiplayer FPSes, this game would be right up there. It's free, stuffed to the gills with over a decade of updates and content, and I'm not sure anyone's found the skill ceiling yet.

Plus, Valve recently did something ludicrous and unprecedented: It released a new game. Sort of. Counter-Strike 2 is here, and while it's built on CS:GO's foundations, it's brought all sorts of new tech to the venerable FPS, including the fluffiest smoke grenades you ever did see.

Dota 2

Link: Steam

Dota 2 is one of the biggest games on Steam. Described simply, two teams of five wizards battle to knock over towers and flatten the enemy base in battles that tend to last between 30 minutes and an hour. In practice it's one of the deepest and most complicated competitive games in the world. Every year the huge International tournament draws millions of viewers, and with 110+ heroes and a consistently shifting meta, this could be the only game you ever need in your Steam library.

The free-to-play implementation is mostly good. Most microtransactions are tied to cosmetics. In addition to individual item purchases you can also buy battle passes that grant access to modes, quests that you complete by playing games, and more cosmetic items.

Warframe

Link: Steam

This third person action RPG about futuristic ninjas can be completely baffling for new players, but if you persist with it you'll find a deep and rewarding game coming out of some of its most ambitious updates to date. At launch it was a game about repeating short missions—and that's still part of it—but there are also open world zones and plans to add co-op space combat. Warframe has been getting better and better in the last few years, and now we reckon it's one of the top free to play games on PC. 

You can spend real money to speed up crafting time, and to buy items and frames outright. Everything is perfectly craftable using in-game currency however, and players seem more interested in using the real-money Platinum currency to unlock new colour schemes.

Team Fortress 2

Link: Steam

This team shooter has been around since 2007, but the character designs are timeless and the class design is still magnificent. Few shooters can point to a class as innovative as The Spy, who can disguise himself as an opposing team to sabotage their gadgets and stab their heavies in the back. If you prefer long-range engagements, the sniper has you covered, or you can ambush enemies up close with the Pyro. Whatever your play style, there's a class to match, and with enough play you will be switching between classes frequently to help your team push the cart or take a tricky point.

Path of Exile

Link: Steam

Path of Exile is one of the deepest action RPGs on the market, and one of the most generous for being free-to-play. The basic structure ought to be familiar: pick a class and embark on Diablo-style killing sprees to earn loot and level up. There's a huge amount of class and item customisation to dig into as you start to move past the tutorial stages. Slot different patterns of gems into your armour sets to min-max your character and take them into even tougher dungeons. You only need to pay money for cosmetics that reskin your weapons and armour

EVE Online

Link: Steam

This space MMO is famous for producing incredible stories of war and betrayal. Its player-driven corporations are fraught political entities that can be very inaccessible to new players. Even if you don't persist long enough to break into the grand PvP game it's still a gorgeous universe full of beautiful spaceships and nebulae. Some ships and skills are locked off in the free-to-play version, but you can spend a huge amount of time in the game before you need to look at paying for premium access.