The Epic Games Store's Holiday Sale is now underway—it actually started on December 11 but we were a little busy with other things you may have heard of—and that means, aside from deals, a whole bunch of new free games to pick up. First on the block is a very big one indeed: The hit Harry Potter sim Hogwarts Legacy, which is yours for keeps if you claim it before December 18.

Hogwarts Legacy is the proverbial problematic fave: As PC Gamer's Tyler Wilde laid out in 2023, there was quite a bit of controversy when the game first launched over whether or not it was okay to play it, thanks to the notoriously anti-trans politics of author JK Rowling. Rowling wasn't involved with the development of Hogwarts Legacy but she does profit from it, and some portion of her money goes to support anti-trans organizations.

But Harry Potter remains much beloved, and Hogwarts Legacy was and still is a hit: Nearly three years after it launched, there are currently more than 18,000 people playing the game on Steam alone. Unsurprisingly given that fact, the price remains pegged at the original $60.

That makes Epic's giveaway—the first time Hogwarts Legacy has gone on the freebie block—a very attractive offer for anyone who hasn't played it yet and still wants to.

Hogwarts Legacy is the first of Epic's annual Holiday Sale, which includes discounts, 20% back on purchases that you can use on other purchases, and finally, gifting. That's right, seven years after the Epic Games Store launched and 18 years after Steam figured it out, you can now buy games on Epic and give them as gifts to your friends.

As usual, the free game situation will accelerate dramatically once the Hogwarts giveaway is over. Epic says 17 games will be given away in total over the course of the sale—so, 16 more after this one—which isn't quite one every day, but it's close enough that you'll probably want to check in on the regular. "Epic Extras," including cosmetic packs, in-game currency, XP boost, and other stuff from a variety of different games will also be thrown out like candy at the Santa Claus Parade over the course of the sale.

So, to recap: Epic's Hogwarts Legacy giveaway is up until December 18, and the Epic Games Store Holiday Sale—with plenty of other free games on the way that don't support odious causes—runs until January 8, 2026.

Despite releasing over a decade ago in 2013 (oh how time flies), it seems that free-to-play online action shooter Warframe has never been more popular than right now. This week, following the release of the new The Old Peace update, the game's concurrent player count on Steam is rocketing towards it's all-time peak. Frankly, it's not hard to understand why.

While the release of any fresh batch of content is sure to bring in new and returning players, at least for a little bit of time, it seems even Warframe's team wasn't expecting the near doubling of players that The Old Peace has encouraged. Taking to Twitter, creative director Rebecca Ford posted a graph of players that shows just that, while writing, "we are doing our best out here to keep things alive but we were not expecting this much of a jump."

Steam analytics site SteamDB backs up the chart with numbers, showing that a high of a little over 175,000 players was reached on December 10 (the new update's release). The last time the game had this many concurrent players was in mid 2021, when a record high of just under 190,000 was logged.

Yet there is so much more to the success Warframe has seen. It is a game of constant iteration and improvement that shows how much the devotion of developer Digital Extremes has paid off. What began as just ninjas in space is now so much more, as evidenced by a speech from the team at The Game Awards followed by a trailer with Werner Herzog attempting to explain what exactly Warframe is.

As Twitch streamer DansGaming aptly put it on Twitter, "The game is blowing up not only because it’s still one of the best F2P games with a fascinating story and very generous monetization. The dev team has been really amping up quality of life upgrades into every patch over the last few years."

What is even more exciting is the prospect that 2026 has even more in store for Warframe. Digital Extremes has said The Old Peace is only prologue to a huge narrative shakeup next year. So that player count record from 2021 may not stand for long.

How do you make an impossibly dense MMO friendly to new players? Warframe dev says you just keep trying: "I don't think we've ever quite got that 100% right"

Baldur's Gate 3 developer Larian Studios unveiled its new project at The Game Awards 2025: It's simply titled Divinity, and aside from an extraordinarily explicit trailer, we don't know a whole lot about it, not even what kind of combat it'll have.

The game that kicked off the series, 2002's Divine Divinity, is a Diablo-inspired action-RPG with real-time battles, and it spawned two action-RPG sequels, 2004's Beyond Divinity and 2009's Divinity 2. That said, these days the Divinity name is more closely associated with the prequel games, Original Sin and Original Sin 2, which are both turn-based tactical RPGs much more similar to Baldur's Gate than Diablo.

That leaves a big open question with the new Divinity. With such a straightforward title, will Larian take the series back to its action-RPG roots, or stick with the turn-based formula that largely put it on the map? No one knows, but just about everyone has capital-T Thoughts.

Before Divinity was even revealed, content creator Synth Potato sparked a debate between people with opposing views on how that question should be answered.

"There are rumors that Larian's next game 'Divinity' is NOT turn-based," wrote Synth Potato on Twitter. "While I learned to absolutely love turn-based RPGs and Baldur's Gate 3 over the last couple of years, Larian's insane depth in writing and gameplay being applied to a real-time action RPG would be INSANE."

There are plenty of replies to Synth Potato's tweet, in general agreement that a new action-RPG from Larian "would go so hard," with one commenter going as far as to say turn-based combat should be left in the past altogether.

"Every great turn-based game it's not great because of turn based, it's great despite of that. Final Fantasy gladly realized that and evolved the mechanic," they said.

Others disagreed. "When you realize how much freedom turn based gives you in specifically Baldurs Gate 3, then you'll understand. If you haven't, you really have to try it," argued another commenter.

The debate continued over on the Divinity Original Sin subreddit, as it does, although that community is understandably more inclined toward turn-based combat. One Redditor proclaimed there "ain't no way Divinity isn't turn-based," arguing that, "BG3 early access played just like DOS2. BG3 is not only one of the most successful RPGs of all the time, but THE most successful turn based RPG. Ain't no way they are pushing that all to the side."

"Moving away from turn based would be a Game of Thrones season 8 level punt," reads the top response to that Reddit thread.

"If Divinity is not a turn-based CRPG I will eat a raw potato," said another turn-based diehard.

As a longtime fan of Diablo and someone who has sunk literal hundreds of hours into Baldur's Gate 3 across multiple saves, I have no skin in this game, but I tend to agree that Larian has established itself as the premiere CRPG studio with back-to-back masterpieces in Divinity: Original Sin 2 and Baldur's Gate 3, and I don't see them going back to action games.

Larian and Baldur's Gate 3 boss Swen Vincke has said the new Divinity is "our biggest, most ambitious RPG yet" and "the Divinity we've always wanted to make," and I don't know, that verbiage to me doesn't sound like a studio massively shaking up how it's made games for more than a decade. If it isn't turn-based, maybe I'll eat a raw potato, too.

Divinity is a "brand-new game" that doesn't require any experience with Larian Studios' past RPGs – but you'll be better off if you've played Original Sin and its sequel

The Game Awards 2025 has come and gone with nary a whisper of news about the future of Titanfall, but fans hoping for a third game in the big-mech-versus-little-parkouring-human series are in somewhat of a frenzy after the FPS was namedropped twice.

Event host Geoff Keighley ended his marketing spree with the announcement of a free-to-play shooter called Highguard, launching in two months. But what set fans of Respawn's once promising series on alert was the way Keighley introduced Highguard, explaining that it "comes from 61 members of the team that built Apex Legends and Titanfall."

The following trailer was, as you can guess, not for a game called Titanfall 3, even if its debut trailer again references Titanfall. And, as you can also probably guess, Titanfall 3 hopefuls are now spiralling.

My live reaction to the game awards from r/titanfall

"BAITED SO HARD," one fan coped on social media, "but what if this is just a coverup for any leaks of TF3?"

"Was half listening when they said from the creators of TF and my heart skipped a beat," another said.

"Do you know the definition of insanity?" a third wrote, riffing on a famous Far Cry 3 speech about repeating the same behaviours over and over again while expecting a different result. Anyway, fingers crossed we'll get a Titanfall 3 next year. A man can dream.

Titanfall 3 hopium reached a fever pitch a few years ago after developer Respawn Entertainment fixed Titanfall 2 years after launch (and years after Apex Legends became big enough to suck up most of the dev's resources), with multiple vague teases adding fuel to the fire in follow-up patches. All the hype simply culminated in a new Apex Legends hero and all but fizzled out from there, though.

In the meantime, here are the best FPS games you can play right now.

It only took 21 years, but finally we're getting a new Knights of the Old Republic game in Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic. While this title appears to be very early in development, judging by the cinematic trailer revealed at the Game Awards and no mention of a release window, it is quite promising as Star Wars games go.

The original director of Knights of the Old Republic, Casey Hudson, is returning as director on this new game, albeit, as part of his newly founded Arcanaut Studios. Hudson is responsible for directing some of the most popular sci-fi RPGs ever made, including the very popular Mass Effect series, during his tenure at BioWare.

While there isn't all that much to glean from the trailer, an official interview on starwars.com has provided quite a bit of additional context about the game and the developers' intention.

Is there a Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic release date?

There is no official release date or window for Fate of the Old Republic. As noted by Casey Hudson, the game's director, in an interview on the official Star Wars website: “We’re still early in development, with many challenges ahead,” but they're going to be "sharing more of what we’re doing as soon as we can!” With this in mind, it's likely we won't be able to play for another couple of years at least, potentially in 2027 or 2028.

Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic trailer

The only trailer for Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic is currently the reveal trailer from the Game Awards.

Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic setting and story

We know very little about Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic in terms of setting and story, but here are some key points gleaned from the Casey Hudson interview and the trailer:

• The game is an action RPG: According to this tweet from Casey Hudson, the game is an action RPG, which means it's more likely to resemble something like Mass Effect a bit more than the primarily turn-based system of the original game.
• Fate of the Old Republic is not a direct sequel or continuation: As stated on starwars.com, meaning we're not following on from either KOTOR game, and it's unlikely we'll meet the same characters.
• You play as a Force-user whose choices will align them with the dark side or the light: While this is a staple of the KOTOR series, it's good to have it confirmed on the official Star Wars site.
• The game is set at the end of the Old Republic period: Again, another confirmation from the official Star Wars site as you "journey through a galaxy on the edge of rebirth at the end of the Old Republic."
• Two of the companion characters include a droid and a Quarren: These are the two that accompany the force-user in the trailer. The droid almost looks KX Imperial security droid-inspired, but it's too early time period-wise to be one of those, so it's likely a new design. You can see the Quarren's distinctive head shape and sort of spot its tentacles towards the end, which is made more likely by the fact that Quarrens were in the previous KOTOR games.
• The story likely involves a precursor civilization: You might think this is a bit of a jump, but one of the most common themes in the KOTOR games is ancient spacefaring civilizations, such as the one that made the Star Forge in the original KOTOR. When I see someone land on a mysterious planet and approach an ancient-looking crashed spacecraft, a voice in me screams precursor.

Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic gameplay

While not much has been revealed about Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic, it's very clear from the interview with Casey Hudson on starwars.com that it's intended as a long-awaited sequel to the original Knights of the Old Republic games, the first of which Hudson directed:

"Fate of the Old Republic represents an opportunity to explore a contemporary vision of a definitive Star Wars experience, using state-of-the-art technology and game design, and an all-new story crafted specifically to deliver on the combination of player agency and immersion in Star Wars that was at the heart of KOTOR.”

Hudson also goes on to say of Arcanaut Studios, where he'll be working on the game as director: "Our goal is developing the kind of games I love making: emotionally powerful, cinematic adventures driven by player agency, narrative depth, and immersive world-building.”

Elsewhere in the interview, he also refers to the "Fundamental pillars" of the KOTOR franchise as "innovative storytelling, memorable characters, challenging gameplay, and immersive agency in the Star Wars galaxy.”

So, it's likely we can expect a character-driven Star Wars RPG that's extremely similar to the original Knights of the Old Republic, but perhaps also taking some influence from the Mass Effect games (which Hudson later directed).