Microsoft’s latest Xbox Free Play Days promotion is live this weekend, handing out eight games you can download and play for free. The lineup is headlined by three strategy and action titles: Anno 117: Pax Romana, Payday 3, and Age of Wonders 4, according to the report from Neowin.
Free Play Days is Microsoft’s way of getting players to try out games without committing to a Game Pass subscription or a full purchase. Here’s what you need to know about this month’s selection and how to claim your games before they disappear.
What’s in this month’s Free Play Days?
The promotion rounds up eight games in total, though the report highlights just three of them. The marquee picks span a few different genres:
- Anno 117: Pax Romana — the latest entry in Ubisoft’s long-running city-building and economic simulation series, set in the Roman era.
- Payday 3 — the co-op heist shooter from Starbreeze Studios that has steadily improved since its troubled launch.
- Age of Wonders 4 — the turn-based strategy game from Triumph Studios, known for its deep faction and customization systems.
The remaining five titles weren’t named in the source report, so you’ll want to check the Xbox store or the Xbox app to see the full list. Free Play Days lineups typically mix well-known releases with some deeper cuts, so the unlisted five could include anything from indie darlings to older AAA titles.
How Xbox Free Play Days works
Free Play Days is a recurring, monthly promotion that predates the current Game Pass model. It launched back in 2020 as a way for Xbox to give players a taste of games they might otherwise buy. Each month, Microsoft opens up a rotating set of titles that anyone can claim for free.
The key detail is the window: these games are available to claim only for a limited time, usually a single weekend. Once the promotion closes, the titles are pulled from the free offer. If you’ve already claimed a game, it stays in your library — but if you let it lapse or remove it, you’ll have to wait for it to show up again, if it ever does.
Unlike Game Pass, Free Play Days doesn’t require a paid subscription. You can claim and play these games on the free tier, whether you’re on an Xbox console or a Windows PC through the Xbox app and Microsoft Store.
How to claim your free games
Claiming the games is straightforward. On an Xbox console, head to the store and look for the Free Play Days hub, or search for each title directly. On a PC, open the Xbox app, navigate to the store section, and find the promotion page listing all eight games.
For each title you want, select Get or Install to add it to your library. Because the offer is time-sensitive, it’s worth grabbing everything at once rather than picking and choosing — once the weekend is over, the free copies are gone until the next event.
What This Means for You
For everyday players, Free Play Days is one of the lowest-risk ways to sample games you wouldn’t normally spend money on. There’s no subscription to sign up for and no charge to your account, so it’s a genuinely free way to pass a weekend.
The catch is the clock. If you’re tempted by any of these titles, don’t wait — the free window is short, and there’s no guarantee these specific games will return. Strategy fans, in particular, are well served this month, with two of the three highlighted games (Anno 117 and Age of Wonders 4) landing in a genre that doesn’t always get free-promotion love.
If you already own any of these on Game Pass or elsewhere, this is a chance to own permanent copies rather than access them through a subscription. For those shopping around, it’s also a useful benchmark for which games are worth full price after the free run ends.
So mark your calendar for this weekend, free up some storage space, and claim before the window shuts.
Source: Neowin
Over to you: Which of this month’s Free Play Days games are you claiming first — Anno 117, Payday 3, or Age of Wonders 4?
