Steam free games November 2026: MW4 DMZ, Payday 3 and two more free right now

Four paid games are free to play on Steam right now. PAYDAY 3 and Age of Wonders 4 are free until Monday, November 9, 2026, at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET). The DMZ mode of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 and the whole of Ready or Not are free until Wednesday, November 11, 2026, at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET). These are free weekends, not giveaways: the games disappear from play when the clock runs out, unless you buy them, and three of them are on sale while the free window is open. The small games circulating in "free to keep forever" lists this week are free-to-play titles that cost nothing every day of the year.

What's free on Steam right now

Here is every paid game Steam lists as free to play today, November 7, 2026, with the end time Steam gives on each store page and what the game costs once the event is over.

All four are Windows games on Steam; none has a Mac or Linux version listed. To start one, open its store page, find the box that says "Play for free until" with the end date and click Play Game. Steam adds the full game to your library and downloads it like any purchase.

Modern Warfare 4 DMZ free trial: start and end time

The biggest name on the list is the newest. Activision opened a free trial of DMZ in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 on Friday, November 6, 2026, at 12 p.m. PT (3 p.m. ET), and it runs until Wednesday, November 11, 2026, at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET). That is just under five days, almost a full day longer than a standard Steam free weekend, and it lands one day after Season 1 went live.

DMZ is the game's extraction mode, meaning every match is a raid: you drop into a hostile zone, collect loot and gear, complete orders and get out with whatever you can carry. Activision describes it as a sandbox where you can loot, fight, negotiate, betray and extract, solo or in a squad, and the free trial is set on Hajin, the South Korean region tied to the campaign. Activision's wording is "full access to DMZ" for the length of the trial, so this is the complete mode rather than a cut-down demo build.

What the trial does not include matters just as much. Multiplayer and the campaign are not part of it. The store page lists the game itself at $69.99 and the Vault Edition at $99.99, with a $30.00 upgrade for owners of the standard game. The Vault Edition adds two operator packs with eight skins, five signature weapons, one season of the BlackCell pass with 20 tier skips and 1,100 Call of Duty Points, a DMZ deployment bonus, a camo pack and a weapon blueprint.

Season 1 is the other reason the timing works. It went live at midnight ET on November 6, 2026 (9 p.m. PT on November 5), and its DMZ content includes the X01 Black Site, a new area with new enemies and orders. If you want the full picture of the season, our guide to the Modern Warfare 4 Season 1 release time covers maps, the battle pass and start times by city.

Payday 3 free weekend: end time and what carries over

PAYDAY 3, the one-to-four-player co-op heist shooter from Starbreeze Entertainment, has been free since Thursday, November 5, 2026, at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET). The Steam store page puts the end at Monday, November 9, at 10 a.m. PT. Starbreeze's own announcement gives the close as 9 a.m. PST in one place and 1 p.m. EST in another, two times an hour apart, so plan around the earlier one if you are mid-heist on Monday morning.

The good news for anyone trying it: Starbreeze says all progress made during the free weekend stays on your account after the event, so you pick up where you left off if you buy the game later. Starbreeze has also dropped its account requirement: a Starbreeze Nebula account is no longer mandatory, so the free weekend starts with nothing more than a Steam login.

The sale price is the real hook here. The base game is down to $8.99, and the Steam page shows the weekend deal running until November 12, three days past the end of free play. Starbreeze adds an extra 10% off the Geared Up Bundle, eleven DLC packs of weapons and cosmetics, on top of the weekend discounts. A Double Infamy event, which doubles the rate at which you earn Infamy levels and skill points, runs alongside the free weekend and ends at the same time. Since launch the game has picked up a campaign mode, the return of the CRIME.NET server browser and reworked skill and armor systems, and every heist that used to be paid DLC is now in the base game.

Age of Wonders 4 free weekend and the sale that outlasts it

Age of Wonders 4, the fantasy 4X strategy game from Triumph Studios and Paradox Interactive, follows the same schedule as PAYDAY 3: free from Thursday, November 5, 2026, to Monday, November 9, at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET). 4X stands for explore, expand, exploit and exterminate: you build an empire city by city on a world map, then fight its battles turn by turn on a tactical grid. Paradox's announcement times it as 7 p.m. CET on both ends, which is the same moment.

The timing follows a fresh expansion. The Silver Seas, released on November 3, 2026, adds two new playable forms, the Aqualon and the Sharkkin, and a Mercantile culture. The free Manta update, which every owner gets, brings Trade Routes, a new economy system linking cities to outposts and free cities, plus ocean outposts and new naval combat rules.

The discount outlives the free play by more than a week. The base game is $19.99, 60% off $49.99, and the Starter Edition ($23.99) and Premium Edition ($35.99) carry the same cut until November 18, 2026. DLCs are up to 35% off, including Expansion Pass 3, and a 2026 Collector's Bundle with everything released so far is 49% off.

Ready or Not free until November 11

Ready or Not, VOID Interactive's tactical police shooter, sits on the same end time as the DMZ trial: Steam lists it as free to play until Wednesday, November 11, 2026, at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET). You play a SWAT officer called in to defuse hostile situations, either solo or in online co-op with friends.

Unlike the other three, Ready or Not has no discount running alongside the free window. The store lists the standard edition at $49.99 and the Digital Deluxe Edition at $69.99, and VOID Interactive hasn't posted an announcement about the event on its Steam news feed. The most recent major update, v1.5, added a Mission Editor that lets you change suspect, civilian and SWAT behavior, health caps and traps on any existing mission and share the result with a code.

Free weekend vs free to keep vs free to play on Steam

Searches for free Steam games mix up three different deals, and Valve's own rules for developers draw the lines clearly.

A free weekend gives you the full game under its usual store listing, typically from Thursday at 10 a.m. PT to Monday at 10 a.m. PT. When it ends, the game stays in your library, but the only option left is to uninstall it until you buy.

Free to keep is Steam's term for a time-limited 100% discount: claim it before the deadline and the license is yours permanently. Valve doesn't promote these anywhere except the game's own store page, doesn't notify people who wishlisted the game, and has no central page listing them. Reviews from players who claimed a game this way don't count toward its review score.

Free to play means the game costs nothing every day. That is what most "free to keep forever" roundups this week actually list: small new releases such as VOLTGATE and Townlet, both out on November 5, 2026, and Gas Station Horror, are free-to-play games on Steam, not limited giveaways. You can grab them any time.

Can you play the free games on Steam Deck?

Valve rates every game it has tested for Steam Deck, and the four free games land in three different places. Ready or Not is Verified, Valve's top rating: it runs with the default controls, legible text and good performance out of the box. PAYDAY 3 and Age of Wonders 4 are rated Playable, meaning they work but need some fiddling; Valve flags small interface text on both, default settings that don't perform well enough in PAYDAY 3, and launcher steps in Age of Wonders 4. Modern Warfare 4 has no Steam Deck rating at all, so plan on playing the DMZ trial on a PC. Owners of Valve's newer hardware can check what changed in the latest system release in our SteamOS 3.9 update guide.

When is the next Steam sale?

The next Steam-wide seasonal sale on Valve's published calendar is the Winter Sale, from December 17, 2026, to January 4, 2027. After that come the Spring Sale, March 18 to 25, 2027, and the Summer Sale, June 24 to July 8, 2027. Valve hasn't set dates for the 2027 Autumn Sale. Steam Next Fest, the week of free demos, returns from February 22 to March 1, 2027.

Until December 17, deals like this week's are set game by game. If one of the four free games clicks, the cheapest moment to buy is before its own sale ends: November 12 for PAYDAY 3 and November 18 for Age of Wonders 4.