Play Overwatch for free this weekend

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All heroes and most game modes available.

Thursday was Overwatch's second birthday, and you can celebrate in an anniversary event complete with a bunch of new skins, a new deathmatch map, and more. It's also having a free weekend, which is now live and runs until Tuesday.

As long as you have a Battle.net account then you can play, and you get access to all 27 heroes, including Brigitte, the game's newest character. You can jump into Quick Play, custom games or the game's Arcade (which has modes that mix up the rules), and play on all 18 maps. You'll unlock cosmetics and emotes for your heroes, level up, and earn loot boxes. Basically, it's the whole game, without competitive play. And if you want to buy it after, then you keep all your progress.

At this point, most people that are interested in the shooter will have played it already, but I'm sure there are a few fence sitters left. If you're one of them, then use these next few days to get a taste. I can't even begin to imagine starting the game from scratch, but if you're looking for some pointers then Chris wrote some tips for beginners back in 2016, and they're still relevant today.

For starting heroes, it's hard to go wrong with Soldier 76. He can self-heal, and his gun is a regular assault rifle, so he's easy to get to grips with. Lucio is also a decent shout if you're looking for a support hero. Tanks can be tricky, but Reinhardt's giant shield is probably the easiest to understand. 

The free weekend ends on Monday at 11:59pm PT. Click here to begin.

Samuel Horti
Samuel Horti

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.