Here's a game you should probably download if you haven't already bought it. For Honor: Starter Edition is free on Steam between now and August 27. This isn't one of those free play weekends where you lose access after a couple of days, either. If you download the game, you can keep and play it forever. For Honor is quite a bit different from most other games on the market. It's an online melee brawler that pits three factions of warriors against one another: Vikings, Knights, and Samurai. All of the heroes have unique fighting styles, and the combat system is deep and intricate. The version that's free right now on Steam is the Starter Edition, which typically sells for $15. As such, it's more limited than the pricier versions you can also purchase. The Starter Edition comes with all the core content of the game--the single-player campaign and all the multiplayer modes and maps are there. What's missing are most of the heroes. Gallery For Honor launched with 12 hero characters. The Starter Edition comes with three heroes fully unlocked (one from each faction). You also get to choose three additional heroes to make "playable." Unlike the fully unlocked heroes, you can't customize these characters with new outfits unless you spend 8,000 Steel (the in-game currency) on each one. The six additional heroes that launched with the game cost 8,000 Steel each to fully unlock. Since the game launched, Ubisoft has introduced six additional heroes to the game. Unlocking these characters costs 15,000 Steel each. (A new faction comprised of four more characters is coming with the Marching Fire update on October 16). You can buy Steel for real-life money or acquire it through gameplay. Ubisoft says earning 8,000 Steel requires an in-game purchase of $8 or between eight and 15 hours of play time. Even if you don't want to do the mental gymnastics to figure out what it would take to unlock all the characters, you can still pick up For Honor: Starter Edition for free right now to try it out.<doc-sep>The Starter Edition of Ubisoft’s frenetic combat-focused action title “For Honor” is free right now via Steam. The game, which is usually $15, is totally free to download and can be added to your permanent collection of Steam titles, no strings attached. The rub is that the Starter Edition is just that: a barebones version of the game with a significantly less amount of content to play around with. It unlocks three different heroes at the onset: the Kensei, Raider, and Warden from the Samurai, Viking, and Knight factions. Players can select the hero that they enjoy playing as the most, and that particular character will be fully customizable, with various executions, emotes, and other options available. This will work in the same manner it does in the full version of the game. However, when it comes to unlocking additional heroes, you’ll simply unlock the rest of the other characters from the same group your initial choice was from. You can only choose to do this once, and must purchase the rest of the heroes for 8,000 Steel, or “For Honor’s” in-game currency. While the free Starter Edition is a tempting offer, it’s not for all players, especially as it requires time and possible in-game currency spent to further unlock other portions of the game. “For Honor” originally launched on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC in Feb. 2017. Since then, it’s grown to include a massive player base of over 7.5 million. Ubisoft has given the game away for free to Steam users in the past in addition to highlighting several sales its digital and console editions.<doc-sep>For Honor’s Starter Edition is temporarily free, and the promotion has brought with it an unprecedented amount of interest in the game, to the tune of a concurrent player peak well over 200,000. Obviously, a free promotion brings more people in, but that’s the eighth highest player count in Steam history – a pretty stunning record even if it is free. The player count peaked at 216,399 overnight, and that’s a pretty major uptick from last month’s peak of 8,204 – or even the all-time record of 45,923 set back at launch. Yes, For Honor offers Steam trading cards, and a significant number of those players are likely idling to get a handful of pennies on the Steam store, but the numbers are still impressive. In fact, it’s even beat out the all-time peak for the Rainbow Six Siege player counts – and that’s a go-to example for a Ubisoft game able to escape from a mediocre launch to find great success later on. Whether For Honor’s impressive week leads to further success down the line remains to be seen, but it’s a promising start. For Honor has been fighting an uphill battle for some time, at least on PC. 95% of the Steam player base dropped off in just a handful of months after release, and though the numbers eventually stabilized, they were certainly lower than you’d hope for a major multiplayer title. (At least on Steam, we don’t know how many play the game straight through uPlay.) During a financial report back in February, Ubisoft said For Honor has 7.5 million registered players, and 1 million monthly active users, though those numbers are spread across consoles, as well. Either way, the topic’s been a bit of a touchy subject with the company. This much interest can only be good thing for For Honor’s prospects – the last few month have shown a general increase in player numbers, as you can see on Steam Charts. People are finding new reasons to stick around, and even if those hooks only grab a small percentage of the people currently playing, that’s still a whole lot of interest to bring in. Head to Steam if you want to pick up the game for yourself.<doc-sep>
For Honor, Ubisoft’s third-person medieval multiplayer fighting game (there’s a mouthful), is free on Steam for the next five days. And that offer, announced yesterday, has given its PC player base a huge jolt of adrenaline to a game that had trouble keeping an audience on the platform. Steam Charts shows a 24-hour peak of 216,499 — which is also the all-time peak on Steam for For Honor since launching in February 2017 — thanks to the free offer. The Starter Edition of the game, normally $15, is free to download until Aug. 27, and those who do can keep the game thereafter. So it’s not a limited free weekend, like For Honor saw back in May — which also goosed its player base, albeit briefly. That still sent For Honor’s peak to a 14-month high, but nothing like the latest spike. The average player base for the past 30 days — although most of this has come within the past 24 hours, has nearly doubled to 10,073, up from 5,139 in July. GitHyp, a site dedicated to observing data and trends from Steam and Twitch, had findings similar to Steam Charts’, too. The Starter Edition was introduced back in March. It only comes with three of the original heroes unlocked, customizable and playable. Players also choose one of the game’s three original factions, gaining the remaining three heroes in that faction for play, but they are not customizable. All the other original heroes can only be played in practice mode, and are unlocked with in-game currency. Any heroes added after the game’s launch may be unlocked, but at nearly double the price. Ubisoft is, of course, hoping that players will bite on the other editions granting more of the good stuff (they’re being offered from $14.99 to $24.99 for a limited time) after trying the game. For Honor will roll out its big Marching Fire update in mid-October, which will add a new faction (the Wu Lin) with new heroes, and a new mode, presenting another incentive to buy in for those players still around.