Grab a free copy of Watch Dogs through Uplay this week

I often forget just how good the original Watch Dogs was (here's Christopher's review for a reminder). Yes, it basically gave you what you expected from an Ubisoft third-person action game, but it had enough fresh ideas to make it worth playing. If you didn't get the chance to create a ten-car pileup by hacking some street lights with protagonist Aiden Pearce's smart phone the first time around, now's your chance. The game will be free from tomorrow for a week via Ubisoft's digital distribution platform Uplay.

That last bit is important, because some people swear off Uplay, but to get a free game of this quality I think it's probably worth logging back in or creating an account, even if you don't end up playing another game through the service. I haven't used it in years—it's been so long that it wouldn't even send me a password recovery email when I went to check today.

So, the deal opens up 4pm GMT/11am ET tomorrow, but you can preload the game before that. Some accounts have been having issues accessing the deal, an issue that Ubisoft says has been fixed this afternoon.

Click here to claim your copy.

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.