The list of Epic's free Christmas games may have leaked

Epic Games Store Holiday Sale 2020
(Image credit: Epic Games)

Update: Today's free game is tower defence classic Defense Grid: The Awakening (opens in new tab), so the list is accurate so far.

Original story: As part of its Epic Holiday Sale, the Epic Store is giving away one free game per day (opens in new tab) instead of its usual weekly giveaways. The freebies began with Cities: Skylines, followed by Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty, at which point a list claiming to detail all of the games about to be given away started circulating. The next game on the list was survival hit The Long Dark, and lo and behold, it was indeed the next free game.

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It's a credible list. Epic has given away repeat titles before, to the relief of those who missed them the first time, so the appearance of previous giveaways like Inside and Metro 2033 Redux checks out. And while Darkest Dungeon isn't currently available in the Epic Store, Darkest Dungeon 2 is and a dataminer has found a listing for its predecessor (opens in new tab). Plus, games have debuted in the store with a giveaway before.

A leak detailing the games being given away in the Epic Mega Sale earlier this year (opens in new tab)proved partially accurate, predicting that GTA 5 and Civilization 6 would be followed by Borderlands: The Handsome Collection and then Ark: Survival Evolved. While the Borderlands pack was indeed the subsequent giveaway, it was followed by Overcooked—and then, a week later, by Ark.

We'll find out if this list is accurate tomorrow, when it's claiming Defense Grid will be free. Other highlights include Alien: Isolation on December 21, Night in the Woods on December 27, Jurassic World Evolution on December 31, and of course the extremely festive Darkest Dungeon on Christmas day. 

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 (opens in new tab). He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun (opens in new tab), The Big Issue, GamesRadar (opens in new tab), Zam (opens in new tab), Glixel (opens in new tab), Five Out of Ten Magazine (opens in new tab), and Playboy.com (opens in new tab), 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.