Steam gamers warned they've 24 hours to claim massive free RPG

You don’t have long to claim this huge open-world RPG for free on Steam, but you may want to hold off on doing so until you finish reading the rest of this article.

Black Desert, the MMORPG from developer and publisher Pearl Abyss, is currently 100% off on Steam.

It’ll usually cost you somewhere around £9 or $10 to get it otherwise, and you’ve only got until July 10 to do so… so it’s worth claiming it immediately, right? I mean, it does have a “Mostly Positive” rating on Steam, so surely this is great.

Ok, well, let’s get the obvious issue out of the way: yeah, it’s free right now, but the base version of the game won’t get you far.

Also, this is probably the fourth time I’ve written a “Black Desert is free” article in my lifetime. They give this game away like five times a year, probably just to funnel people into buying the DLC content.

Alright, DLC content is one thing but what’s going on with the recent reviews for the game being “Mixed”?

It’s because, you guessed it, the game has, following some recent patches, become a pay-to-win grindfest.

“Still pay to win, big paywalls & infinite grind to get a single upgrade, still a greedy a** company”, writes Steam reviewer Mae.

“Every upgrade costs billions of silvers per ATTEMPT (usually 10% chance or less), without taking CRON STONES in account, which is the biggest scam ever, and you can of course still BUY outfits and boxes from the shop for real money to GET A CHANCE to UPGRADE without taking the risk to DOWNGRADE your gears and lose your progress.”

“If you want a moneysink with RNG rigged against you you're better off hitting the casino”, writes user Konomi Nanasaki.

Oooooh, so that’s why it’s free… so you can spend extra money on gambling.

Yeah, I can’t recommend this one in good conscience. Play a good free-to-play game instead, like Umamusume: Pretty Derby.