Over 7.5 million people got A Total War Saga: Troy for free

(Image credit: Sega)

A Total War Saga: Troy was free for its first 24 hours on the Epic Games Store this week, and during that time was apparently claimed by over 7.5 million people. If every single one of those gift copies opens up and disgorges a bunch of Greeks with spears, we're in trouble.

"We were optimistic but we couldn't have predicted this level of excitement," said Creative Assembly's chief product officer Rob Bartholomew, via the ancient Trojan medium of the press release. "It's been incredible to work with Epic on giving this brand new release away for free. Now we get to welcome so many strategy players – new and old – to experience this incredible Saga. We're very happy."

Our reviewer Fraser Brown gave Troy a 75, saying, "This Total War experiment, then, is more of a success than Thrones of Britannia, and I pray the tactical shake-up won't be forgotten when cavalry inevitably reappears with the next game." He went on to note that he'll be returning to Three Kingdoms and Warhammer 2 rather than replaying Troy, however.

We'll have to wait and see if this giveaway gateway drugs a bunch of Fortnite fans into discovering the joys of one-more-turning their way to victory and complaining about siege battles. But it sure would be nice.

A Total War Saga: Troy is now available to purchase on the Epic Games Store for £35/US$50/€50/AUS$75.

Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.