A free game is the easiest way to get a whole group into the same co-op game. Nobody pays before they know they like it, and the friend who plays twice a year doesn’t have to buy a copy. But “free” covers several different deals, and some of them cost money later. The list below shows co-op games in our catalogue that cost nothing to get. The rest of this page explains what to check before the group commits.

The list is live and shows games whose price is zero, the most popular first. For a group on mixed platforms, check on each game’s store page that your platforms play together.

Four kinds of free

Stores use “free” for different things. Steam’s documentation for developers draws the lines clearly.

  • Free to play. The game is always free to download, and sometimes contains in-game purchases. This is what our free list shows.
  • Free to keep. A time-limited giveaway: claim it during the promotion and it stays in your library. Miss the window and it costs the normal price.
  • Free weekend. Temporary access to the full game. When it ends, the game stays in your library but you need to buy it to keep playing. A good way to test a game with your group, not a free game.
  • Demos and playtests. A slice of the game, or an early build. Some include co-op, some don’t. Developers can post demos and playtests to our feed, and they show up on the home page when they do.

What free can hide

In-game purchases

Most free co-op games earn money inside the game. That alone is fine. What matters for a group is what the money buys.

  • Cosmetics only (outfits, colours, emotes) don’t change the game. Everyone plays the same thing.
  • Characters, maps or modes can split a group. If one friend has paid for a character and another hasn’t, check that you can still play together in the same match.
  • Progress boosts can mean the friend who pays moves ahead and the others fall behind. In co-op, a gap in power can make the game less fun for both sides.

Read the store page and a few recent player reviews before the group starts. Reviews tend to mention when a free game pushes purchases hard.

Extra accounts

Some games ask every player to create an account with the publisher on top of their Steam or console account. That means one more sign-up, one more password, and sometimes adding each other as friends again inside the game. Steam treats this as a known category: its Families feature excludes games that require an additional third-party account. Check for an account requirement on the store page before game night, not during it.

Console subscriptions

A free game on a console can still need a paid subscription for online play. The rules differ per platform:

If your group plays on a mix of platforms, check each one. A game that is free for the PC players may not be free to play online for everyone else.

Size and hardware

Free doesn’t mean light. Some free co-op games are large downloads with demanding hardware requirements. Check the minimum requirements against the weakest PC or oldest console in the group, so nobody spends the evening watching a progress bar.

A checklist before the group commits

  1. Is it free to play, or only free this week?
  2. Do purchases change what players can do together, or only how they look?
  3. Does everyone need an extra account?
  4. Does anyone need a console subscription for online play?
  5. Will it run on everyone’s device?

If the answers are clean, a free game is the lowest-risk way to try co-op as a group. If one of them is a problem, a cheap paid game can work out better. The under $10 and under $20 lists are the next places to look, and our game pages show what a game costs for the whole group.

How this list is built

The list is a filter of our catalogue by price. Games come from their developers, who submit them for review by a person, and from our editors, who add co-op games from their store pages and public sources. Each page says where its facts come from. Prices of games with a Steam link are updated from Steam every day. Each game page says where its facts come from: its developer or our editors.