Assassin's Creed: Origins is free to play this weekend

(Image credit: Ubisoft)

If your weekend is free and you've been thinking to yourself, gosh, it sure would be fun to travel back in time to ancient Egypt, kill a whole bunch of people, and launch a millennia-long secret war between two shadowy groups vying for control of humanity, I've got good news: Assassin's Creed: Origins is going free for the weekend.

Origins tells the tale of Bayek, who gets into a beef with some guys, goes underground, and then comes back for revenge, which somehow spirals into murdering Julius Caesar. It's a few years old now—it came out in 2017—but it's also really good. Chris called it "one of the strongest games in the series" in his 84% review, and we selected it as the Best Open World Game in our year-end roundup. For a series that had been around for ten years (and the same number of main series games, plus various spinoffs) at that point, that's pretty impressive.

To see what it's all about, pop around to ubisoft.com, log into your account, and then fire up the Uplay client (download and install it first, if necessary) and start the preload. The Assassin's Creed: Origins free weekend will start at 9 am local time on June 19, and run until 4 pm on June 21.

Andy Chalk

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.