Outriders is free to play on Steam until Thursday

I liked People Can Fly’s third-person shooter Outriders well enough when I played around with it last year, although I can’t disagree too much with Morgan’s assessment in his 63% review (opens in new tab) that it pales in comparison to the studio’s previous games, Bulletstorm and Painkiller. I didn’t stick with it after launch though, and plenty of others fell away with it: Its Steam numbers fell off from a peak concurrent player count of more than 125,000 (opens in new tab) in April 2021 to a little shy of 2,600 over the past 30 days.

Despite that decline (and that doesn’t account for console and Game Pass players, don’t forget), Outriders is still out there and still growing: In fact, the Worldslayer expansion (opens in new tab), with new locations, gear, weapons, and endgame content, is set to go live on June 30. And because Square Enix would very much like new players to give it a shot (and lapsed players to come back), it’s made Outriders fully free to play for the next three days on Steam (opens in new tab): Until 10 am PT/1 pm ET on June 23, you can just pop over to the store  page, punch the “play game” button, and, well, play the game.