Steam Makes Four Games Free Until November 16

Steam is running a free weekend promotion through Monday, November 16, 2026, with four games free to play in full: Company of Heroes 3, Deep Rock Galactic: Rogue Core, IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Stalingrad and Cities: Skylines 2. A player downloads them from their Steam pages, plays the complete games, and loses access when the window closes unless they buy.

The four don't overlap much, which is the point of the format. Company of Heroes 3 is a real-time strategy game built on squad tactics. IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Stalingrad is a flight simulator with a simulation-first cockpit model. Cities: Skylines 2 is a city builder. Deep Rock Galactic: Rogue Core is the Early Access spin-off of the co-op shooter Deep Rock Galactic, and it's the only one of the four still in active pre-release development.

Free weekends are a pricing tool, not a giveaway. The publisher trades a weekend of access for wishlist adds, player counts that other players can see, and a discount decision at the end of the trial while the game is already installed. A player who has built a city or a campaign save by Monday is deciding about a game they've already started, which converts better than a store page does.

The practical details are simple. The games are free to play, not free to keep, and progress in a purchased copy carries over because the installed build is the same one. The window ends Monday, November 16. Anyone choosing one should pick by hours available: the simulator and the city builder both reward a long single session, and the strategy game and the co-op spin-off are built for shorter ones.

The lineup also lands in a crowded week for PC players. Grand Theft Auto VI launches November 19 on consoles with no simultaneous PC release, and mid-November's Steam calendar has filled with smaller launches while major publishers clear the window. A free weekend for four established games is a direct bid for the hours those players would otherwise spend sampling new releases, and it costs a publisher nothing but a weekend of margin on titles already sold once.