If you are a Steam user, you may know that Steam has an ever-growing assortment of games that are free to play. Valve does include demoes, free to play, and free games in the category, which makes it a bit difficult to find the interesting ones.
Generally speaking, free means that the game is free to download and play. These games usually do not include payable content.
Free to play games, on the other hand, usually come with content that you need to pay for. Some limit this to cosmetic items, others limit progression or entire parts of the game, if you do not pay.
Here is the overview:
- Free — No in-game purchases. May offer DLC though.
- Free to Play — May include in-game purchases, often to unlock content.
- Free demos — Test versions of games that offer limited access to content.
Up until now, there was not really an option to check out trending free games on Steam. While you could browse the free to play listing of games, you’d only find “new & trending” and “trending upcoming” games there.
If you wanted to get a list of the hottest free games on Steam at the time of writing, you’d be out of luck.
Valve added a new trending free listing to Steam, but it is not where you’d expect it to be. You do not find it on the free to play page on Steam. Instead, it is found on the startpage.
Here is how you get there:
- Open the Steam Store, either in the browser or in the Steam client.
- Scroll down until you come to the New & trending listing.
- Activate Trending Free there to display the free games that are trending on Steam right now.
Steam displays the top 10 free games that are trending on Steam right now. Note that you may get a mix of everything the free category has to offer. This means, that you may see free demos next to free to play and free games on Steam.
Is it a groundbreaking feature? Not really. Still, if you like to browse what is trending on Steam, you may find this new trending free filter useful as well.
Do you use Steam or another digital gaming platform? Feel free to leave a comment down below.
Steam was orignally just a client to help connect players of Valve multiplayer games like Team Fortress Classic and Counterstrike. There was no store. I started using it back then.
There are a few truely free games worth playing.
Maries Room is a “Hidden Gem”. Home is another. My kids love anything FNAF and we we’re pleased to find “Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria Simulator” is free. They’ve also made “The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit” stand alone now.
I remember that it was a big controversy when Valve required Steam to play their latest game. How the times have changed..
I still don’t like that, especially being forced to use it for games you could play on LAN.
Why use a far away remote server to play with my kid who’s in the next room?
Actually, we don’t. Thanks to atom0s and Goldberg we play over LAN with zero ping and zero data collection.