Does Steam periodically give you free games? I keep seeing games appear in my library with a "1 day left" or "twenty hours left" etc. message next to it, but I don't want to install something if they're going to charge me later. So...what's going on? I've noticed this almost every weekend I start up steam.
An artist's depiction of an Extended Unit Death
It's free for a limited time; they let you install and play it, but after it expires, you have to buy it if you want to keep playing. I believe they're called "Free weekend games."
Oooh Okay. That makes more sense than just randomly throwing free games around.
Just here for the activity... well not really
They gave Portal out for free, but that was as a promotion for the Mac version.
guy lifting weight (animated smiley):
O-IC
OI-C
"Oh, I see it"
I got portal for free at some point too, but I seem to remember that promotion running differently.
An artist's depiction of an Extended Unit Death
Portal was unique in that there was a promo for it on Steam's site. We had a topic about that here:
http://www.staredit.net/topic/11037/If they're actually giving away a free game, we tend to make a commotion about it. Even when it's not a temporary promotion (see
http://www.staredit.net/topic/13987/).