Key Highlights:
- Deadshot, Space Menace and Crystal Crisis are currently 100% free to claim and keep permanently on Steam.
- Crystal Crisis has the earliest deadline, ending early on September 22 for UK players.
- Space Menace is being given away alongside the biggest Steam discount yet for its sequel.
Quick Links:
Over the weekend, Steam has three normally paid PC games available completely free to keep, with Deadshot, Space Menace and Crystal Crisis all temporarily reduced by 100%.
These are genuine ownership giveaways rather than Free Weekends. Players only need to add each game to their Steam account before its deadline, after which the licence remains attached to the account and the game can be downloaded later. SteamDB records all three promotions as Free to Keep packages.
| Game | What is it? | UK claim deadline |
|---|---|---|
| Crystal Crisis | Competitive puzzle battler | September 22, 7:59am BST |
| Deadshot | Retro first-person shooter | September 23, 6pm BST |
| Space Menace | Sci-fi real-time strategy | September 23, 6pm BST |
I think that ownership is the important part here. Steam currently has several other games available through temporary free-play events, but these three can actually remain in your library once their promotions finish.
Deadshot
Deadshot is free to keep on Steam until September 23, replacing its normal $4.99 US price with a 100% discount for the promotion.
Developed by v0lt, the retro-styled FPS drops an army soldier into a mutant apocalypse with clear influences from older shooters including Half-Life, Doom and Quake. Its campaign consists of three chapters with six levels each, seven weapons and five weapon attachments.
There is a nice bit of timing behind this giveaway. Deadshot originally launched on September 18, 2024, while the free promotion began on September 18, 2026, exactly two years later. I could not find a public statement from v0lt explicitly calling this an anniversary giveaway, but who cares as long as it’s free.
One other disclosure worth knowing before downloading is that v0lt says generative AI was used to create bases for some environmental textures, which were then substantially modified by hand for the finished game.
Space Menace
The second giveaway is Space Menace, a single-player sci-fi strategy game that normally costs £6.29 / $6.99 on the Steam store and remains free to keep until September 23 at 6pm BST.
Players begin with a single ship before taking contracts, salvaging defeated vessels and expanding into a larger fleet. Combat takes place from a top-down perspective, with weapons, utilities and strike craft allowing ships to be customised while relationships with different factions change around the player.
This giveaway has a clearer commercial reason behind it.
Developer Only4Gamers announced the original game’s free promotion alongside a 60% discount for Space Menace 2, describing that as the sequel’s biggest discount to date. Space Menace 2 launched in July 2025 and expands the same fleet-building and real-time-with-pause formula.
Only4Gamers also pushed a new Space Menace update during the giveaway. Version 4.1.9 increases starting credits from 5,000 to 10,000, fixes a resolution-menu bug, reduces text brightness and includes other smaller changes.
Crystal Crisis
The giveaway with the shortest deadline is Crystal Crisis, which needs to be claimed before 7:59am BST on September 22. Steam currently lists the game at 100% off from its normal £15.49 / $19.99 price.
Nicalis describes it as a hybrid between a competitive fighting game and a falling-block puzzler. Players match coloured crystals to attack an opponent while building a Burst gauge that can trigger offensive or defensive abilities.
The roster is considerably stranger than that description might suggest.
Its 20 playable characters include Isaac from The Binding of Isaac, Quote and Curly Brace from Cave Story, Astro Boy, Black Jack and Umihara Kawase. There are also 40 different Burst abilities, local and online multiplayer, Arcade, Survival, Tag Team and a branching Story mode.
The PC version also supports cross-play with Nintendo Switch and the Epic Games Store following a 2021 update, meaning the giveaway is not restricted to playing against other Steam users online.
Steam currently gives Crystal Crisis a Very Positive overall user-review summary, with 81% of 135 reviews recommending it at the time of checking.
The three offers work in the same way as the Breathedge free-to-keep promotion in August: claiming the game during the promotional window is enough. There is no requirement to install or finish it before the deadline.
There are other free Steam offers running this weekend, but they should not be confused with these giveaways. Diablo IV and Sea of Thieves: 2026 Edition, for example, are currently listed as Play For Free, meaning access ends when their respective free periods finish rather than the games becoming permanently owned. Do not get the wording mixed up!
For anyone building a backlog rather than looking for another game to immediately install, the practical move is simply to claim all three before their individual deadlines.
