Steam is one of the most popular gaming services along with PSN and XBL for digital distribution of games, various software and add-ons. Today, the Steam platform has gained high popularity due to many features, among which Steam Cloud service for cloud storage of files, Workshop for mod creators, various forums, Greenlight service, Big Picture function and much, much more are highlighted. By the end of 2013, it was announced that over 65 million users were registered in the service, and daily community activity now reaches 6 million users.
How to install the game on Steam?
Now a huge number of games (except titles from EA, Blizzard and some other developers) can be activated on Steam, thereby gaining many additional features besides a comfortable game (achievements, cloud storage of saved games, “honor boards”, etc.). How to install the game on Steam? There are 3 options here:
- The game is bought at retail (disk). In this case, you will naturally have to register on Steam. Next, just insert the game disc and follow the instructions. At the initial stage, you will be asked to enter a license key, which should be in the box. Enter it and wait for the installation to complete.
- Game purchased digitally NOT on Steam. In this case, go to Steam => Games => Activate via Steam => Enter the digital key. After the operation, the game you purchased appears in the "Library", where you just have to download it.
- The game was bought directly on the Steam service. If so, then the game will automatically activate and immediately appear in the "Library", where you will need to download it.
As you can see, everything is very simple. Next, we will tell you how to get games for free on Steam without spending your hard-earned money.
Free-to-play (F2P) games
As the name implies, F2P is a model for free distribution of games where developers get the main profit from microtransactions, that is, depositing funds by players (optional), who want to pump their character faster, buy additional buns and customization elements. Today, F2P is gaining more and more popularity, as the number of products themselves may indicate. There are a lot of such games on Steam, however, only 2 deserve special attention - Dota-2 and Team Fortress-2. The first is the most popular title on Steam, gathering daily over half a million gamers around the world. This game was highly praised by critics and players, and various tournaments where considerable prize pools are being played ($ 1-3 million) only fuels interest in Dota-2 and replenishes the ranks of fans every minute. As for Team Fortress-2, this is also a fairly popular FPS game with many modes and unique gameplay capabilities. A number of free F2Ps can also be supplemented by Alien Swarm, America's Army-3, Spacewar, HAWKEN, Infinity Wars and others. All you need to do is just go to the appropriate page in the Steam store and download it to your computer, linking it to your account. So easy we get a free game on Steam.
Steam Trades Service
Next, we will talk about such a useful service as Steamtrades. This feature was created specifically in order to allow Steam users to exchange gifs (and only with them, because games connected to the account cannot be exchanged), won, for example, according to a random image in the Steam gift distribution service, which we will talk about later. But why exchange the games that are already free? It's simple: a gift game can already be bought from you, or, which is extremely possible, will be banal to your liking. All you need to do is post an ad on Steamtrades itself, specifying both games (the one you want to exchange and the one you want to receive). As practice shows, it is better to exchange with Western players who are more honest and decent. Unfortunately, in order to bargain with users from abroad you need to know English (at least at a basic level). If there is no such knowledge, then everything will be somewhat regrettable, because of which you will have to bargain only with Russian-speaking users. So you found out another great way to get a Steam game for free. Well, create ads, make new acquaintances and exchange goods. Good luck
Steam Gift Service
If you already have a lot of games in the Steam system (worth over $ 150), then you can register on the site of this service. The service itself is intended for the distribution of gift (gift) games. When you first visit the site, the system will automatically check the total value of all your titles. If you are wondering how to get games for free on Steam, then you can try your luck and participate in the distribution of Gift (gifts), where the winner is randomly selected. Try it, you’ll be lucky! Each game is involved in the distribution from one day to one month, so sometimes you have to suffer. There are also services that are similar in principle to working with this service - these are Play blink, Game miner and Gala giveaways. You can learn more about each of them on the official sites. Well, here’s another great way to get games for free on Steam.
Holiday discounts and gifts from developers
Steam service often pleases its users with good discounts, which sometimes reach up to 90%. The largest number of games that fall into the list with discounts is observed on the eve of big holidays, such as New Year, Christmas, Easter and others. However, many titles are available at good discounts all year round, but only at 5-10 per week. As for gifts from the developers, it is often that they will “screw” another game from the same developer or publisher to the output of the expected project. So, for example, it was with Max Payne-3 from Rockstar Games, when the first 2 parts were given for free to purchase this game. The same thing happened with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare-3, when the debut part of the “modern war” was given as a present. There are many such examples, but we will not go into details, you understood the marketing move . Separately, I would like to mention the company Valve, which presented all players with Left-4 Dead-2 for the New Year 2014. Players only had to pin it to their account and download. Games through Steam can also be obtained for free in an illegal (pirated) way, which you can read about further.
Pirate way
If for any reason you do not want to buy games honestly, supporting developers, then this item is for you. In the vastness of many torrent trackers, you can find a distribution with a hacked Steam client. As a rule, it is possible to install up to 100 games in it, which you can get for free. Of course, in the hacked version there are not so many really excellent and high-quality products, but if you are wondering how to get games for free on Steam, then this method will be the easiest.