Steam Makes 100-Hour 2025 Game Completely Free Until September 10

Published Sep 4, 2026, 6:00 AM EDT

James is a gaming writer from London who has spent thousands of hours exploring titles from every genre. Though he has a particular affinity for multiplayer titles like World of Warcraft, Destiny 2 and League of Legends, he has also put thousands of hours into single-player experiences, from deep RPGs to epic PC strategies. When he's not playing or writing, he can usually be found supporting his beloved Brentford FC.

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There's no doubt that Steam is easily the most dominant platform in PC gaming right now, and in fairness, most of that comes down to it being spectacularly well-managed. As well as being extremely convenient and responsive for those who playing anything from deep single-player RPGs to fast-paced multiplayer shooters, it has also become a pretty great place to go to find a bargain.

As well as their showpiece event sales, Steam also regularly has individual games on offer for players to pick up well below RRP. Slightly rarer than that (though still shockingly common) is the mythical free game, and their latest effort in this regard comes from one of the best strategy series of all-time.

Custom Image by Milada Dzevitski

Over on Steam, Sid Meier's legendary strategy series, Civilization, is celebrating a staggering 35 years since it debuted, and to mark the occasion, almost every release tied to the franchise is on sale. Even better than that, the most recent game in the series, Civilization VII, is going totally free-to-play for a week, giving you plenty of time to try out everything it has to offer before committing to the full purchase.

That offer runs until September 10, and there's a lot of value in there as someone who plays the game regularly. Though HowLongToBeat has a completionist run at 100 hours, the real strength of Civilization VII is that it's immensely replayable, and you can easily spend five times as long as that without ever really breaking a sweat.

If you do play it and end up loving what it has to offer, the game is also 50% off worldwide for as long as the event is live. You can also pick up the various expansion packs at a significant reduction of at least 50%, as well as the older games in the series for less than the price of a nice lunch.

Civilization VI is available for just $4.99, and you can pick up the Anthology Edition for just $24.99, which includes all of that game's myriad DLCs.

If you are yet to jump into the Civilization games, or the 4X strategy genre as a whole, it really is about as good as onboarding gets. The games are very approachable, but incredibly deep, allowing you to get out of them as much as you are willing to put in. Just make sure to commit before September 10 if you're planning to, as the prices will go up again after that.

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