9/10 Steam Game Given Limited Free Play, Take on the World

If you’ve got zero plans this weekend and fancy sticking your teeth into a 9/10 game for free, then Steam has a little treat for you (but only until November 24).

Sick of hearing about how the world is veering towards catastrophe in the media? No need to imagine it any more, because you can relive the highlight reels of the last big World War for yourself right now for free!

That's because Hearts of Iron IV, the 2016 "grand strategy" game from developers Paradox Development Studio and publisher Paradox Interactive, is currently free to play on Steam until 24 November.

If you haven't heard of Hearts of Iron before, the series has quite a prestigious history. The original release, Hearts of Iron, dropped back in 2002 to relatively decent reviews, but the series has gone from strength to strength with each new release over the years.

Unsurprising really, considering that the devs, Paradox Development Studio, have been behind some of the most popular (and well-received) strategy games of the last three decades, including Victoria III, Crusader Kings III, Stellaris, and Europa Universalis IV.

An exciting screenshot of a map from Hearts of Iron IV's official Steam store page, Paradox Interactive

To celebrate the release of the game’s latest expansion, No Compromise, No Surrender, Paradox Interactive has decided to let players on Steam try out Hearts of Iron IV for free, from now until November 24.

Plus, if you do end up liking the game, you'll be able to grab the standard version of the game and the General Edition of Hearts of Iron IV for 70 percent off until 4 December.

If you decide to grab the General Edition, that'll save you a whopping £35 off the base game and three of its DLC expansions.

Alternatively, you could opt to buy the Ultimate Bundle, which is currently 41% off, for roughly £85 instead.

Sounds like a lot (because it is), but that would save you roughly £60.

Now whether or not you fancy dropping a tenth of the cost of a used Peugeot 206 on a single game is entirely up to you, but, based on the review score, it might be worth the investment.

Hearts of Iron IV currently has a Very Positive review score on Steam with over 250,000 reviews (90% of which are positive), so it’s clearly doing something right.

Sounds like the free weekend is actually just a gateway freebie into getting you to spend close to £100 on a bunch of DLC, now that I think about it…