Five games are sitting at $0 on Steam right now, and the offer shuts down on September 14. These aren’t demos or trial weekends: download them and they’re yours permanently.
The selection is odder than the usual free-game roundup. A Mars colony sim, an F1 title with a season pack attached, a co-op heist shooter, a 64-player medieval brawler and the newest Borderlands. Nothing connects them, and that’s half the appeal.
Planning to pay full price for something like The Blood of Dawnwalker this weekend? It might be worth holding off a few days.
Begin with the strange black cubes
Originally launched in November 2025, Surviving Mars: Relaunched is an award-winning sci-fi city builder that hands you the job of recolonizing Mars. The remaster piles on content covering exploration, infrastructure and the colonists you have to keep alive.
No review captures the mood as well as the store page pitch does: “All you need for this relaunched mission to create a thriving Martian settlement is a steady supply of resources, oxygen, decades of training, experience with sandstorms… and a curious attitude to discover the purpose of those weird black cubes that appeared out of nowhere. With a bit of sprucing up, this place is going to be awesome!”
So yes. The cubes are there. Nobody knows why.
The F1 offer is the quiet standout
F1 25 arrives bundled with its 2026 Season Pack, and that’s the detail worth flagging. It brings in Audi and Cadillac, two brand-new teams, plus Liam Lawson, Isack Hadjar, Max Verstappen and the rest of the grid.
A new Madrid track is included, along with cars exclusive to the 2026 season. The base game only arrived in May 2025, so this is hardly dusty back-catalog filler. It’s a current racing sim with its forward-looking DLC attached, for nothing.
For anyone suffering through the GTA drought
Crime Boss: Rockay City, a 2024 co-op title built for one to four players, swings between careful stealth and a full killing spree depending on how your heist goes. It pairs FPS gameplay with a roguelike campaign structure and voice acting that’s genuinely funny.
The loop has you and your friends robbing your way to enough cash for better weapons, a bigger arsenal and new characters to hire. Anyone who has been staring into the Grand Theft Auto void will get a few evenings out of it.
MORDHAU pulls the opposite way. Build a mercenary, then throw them into medieval battles with up to 64 other players, laying siege to castles and charging with cavalry. Expect fast combat, deep character customization, a massive weapon list and gore. It runs online or offline.
And then there’s Borderlands 4
The franchise’s latest entry shipped in September 2025, which makes its appearance on a free-games list the most surprising thing on offer here.
You choose one of four Vault Hunters and start causing trouble on a planet ruled by a ruthless dictator. Billions of guns, enemies and bosses designed to be dismantled in specific ways, and dialogue that knows exactly how stupid it’s being.
Five games, five wildly different moods, one deadline. Mars needs colonists, Madrid needs a lap record, and somewhere a castle gate is about to come down.