Death Stranding is free on the Epic Games Store right now

Epic gets into the Strand spirit on Christmas.

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

Update:After Epic’s servers took the kind of beating last seen when it gave away Grand Theft Auto 5, the site has come back online. Only now, the Christmas giveaway is for thebase edition of Death Strandingrather than the director’s cut.

Original story:Santa has a name, and it’s Sam Porter Bridges.

For a couple weeks every December Epic gives away a newfree game on the Epic Game Storeevery single day. This year has already included some great gets, including the classic Fallout games and the Christmas Eve gift of Metro: Last Light Redux. But wow, Christmas day is delivering big: Epic Rolled out Death Stranding: Director’s Cut for free on December 25.

We’re Strand Game Appreciators here at PC Gamer. Death Stranding was our2020 GOTY, and we appreciatedall the extra stuffthe Director’s Cut added to an already great game. It only released on PC this year, making this a very fresh giveaway for Epic, even if the base game is now somehow a whole three years old.

Earlier this year we reflected onhow the pandemic affected our experiencewith Death Stranding. Now we knowa sequel’s on the way, which will hopefully star moreincredibly named characters.

The Epic Games Store seems to be straining under the load of the Death Stranding Director’s Cut giveaway, but it’s still online as of this writing. If you have trouble getting the store to load, give it a few minutes and try again. You’ve got a whole day to grab Death Stranding before it’s back to its usual $40 price. If you happen to own the base game on Steam already, the Director’s Cut upgrade is currently part of the Steam sale, andwill only cost you $6.

The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals

The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals

Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.

Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites likeThe WirecutterandTestedbefore joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he’ll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.

When he’s not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it’s really becoming a problem), he’s probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific).

The reigning Pope of 1-bit mystery games is back with a Halloween treat: a haunted house game you can play in your browser

Return of the Phantom, which is basically The Phantom of the Opera but with time travel, is free on GOG

SteelSeries Apex Pro TKL Gen 3 review