The Grand Strategy and Space Extraction Era: Epic’s First Weekly Drop of 2026

Epic Free Games

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1 January, 2026

Total War - 3 Kingdoms Free Strategy on Epic Store picture — Total War - 3 Kingdoms Free Strategy on Epic Store

The holiday sprint has officially cooled down, and Epic is swapping the daily chaos for a much more manageable weekly rotation. Yesterday’s final 24-hour gift, Chivalry 2, is no longer up for grabs, but the replacement is a heavy-hitting double feature. From today, January 1, until January 8 at 11:00 AM ET, you can claim both Total War: THREE KINGDOMS and the sci-fi newcomer Wildgate for zero dollars. This shift signals a return to form for the storefront, moving away from “mystery” reveals back into a predictable schedule that actually gives you time to play the games you’re hoarding.

Total War: THREE KINGDOMS

This is arguably the most polished entry in the long-standing strategy franchise, set during the legendary collapse of the Han Dynasty. It isn’t just about moving thousands of soldiers across a map; it’s a character-driven epic where personal rivalries and diplomatic betrayals dictate the fate of ancient China. The “Romanticized” mode turns your generals into superhuman warriors capable of taking on entire units solo, while the “Records” mode keeps things grounded in historical realism. If you happen to miss the free week on Epic, the Steam Store is currently running an 80% discount through January 5, and the G2A Marketplace (affiliate link) often has keys for roughly $9.00, making it a resourceful pickup even after the giveaway ends.

Total War - 3 Kingdoms massive straegy picture — Total War – 3 Kingdoms massive straegy

Wildgate

Providing a sharp contrast to the slow-burn strategy of the Three Kingdoms, Wildgate is a 2025 arrival that focuses on high-stakes PvPvE extraction in deep space. You and your crew are dropped into hostile sectors where you have to balance hunting for ship upgrades against the threat of rival players and lethal environmental anomalies. The combat is a hybrid of first-person shooting and tactical ship-to-ship maneuvering, requiring genuine coordination to survive the extraction phase. While the Epic giveaway is the best current deal, the Steam Store has it for 60% off until next week. If you’re looking for a second chance later, G2A typically lists keys around $1.80, which is basically pocket change for a modern sci-fi title.

A Resourceful Start to the Year

Securing these two titles adds over $90 of retail value to your library for nothing, covering both the grand-scale strategy and the competitive shooter niches. Total War provides a campaign that can easily eat up a hundred hours of your January, while Wildgate offers a fresh loop for your weekend squad sessions. Make sure you hit the claim button before the next rotation on January 8 to start 2026 with a significantly more valuable library.

Wildgate - Gameplay screenshot picture — Wildgate – Gameplay screenshot

Battlements and Brutality: Chivalry 2 is Today’s New Year’s Eve Freebie

Free Epic Games

By

Mat

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31 December, 2025

Chivalry 2 - Killing with crossbow picture — Chivalry 2 - Killing with crossbow

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

While yesterday’s gift, the Trine Classic Collection, offered a lighthearted fantasy escape for three, today’s drop is all about the chaotic, unrefined noise of the front lines. Today, December 31, Epic is giving away Chivalry 2 as its final 24-hour mystery gift of the year. You have until January 1, 2026, at 11:00 AM ET to secure this $40 multiplayer slasher before the storefront shifts to the New Year’s Day reveal. For those who prefer the Steam ecosystem, the Steam Store has it listed at a massive 80% discount until January 5, priced at just $7.99. If you’re really hunting for spare change, the secondary market at G2A currently has keys for a couple of bucks less than Steam, though the giveaway makes that choice irrelevant for the next day.

Chivalry 2 - Free on Epic Games Store on New Years Eve picture — Chivalry 2 – Free on Epic Games Store on New Years Eve

Medieval Mayhem on a Cinematic Scale

This isn’t a game about delicate fencing or precise dueling; it is a 64-player mosh pit designed to feel like a gritty historical movie. You are thrown into sprawling objective-based maps where you might be defending a castle gate one minute and charging a burning village the next. The combat system uses directional swings and parries, but it shines most when the plan falls apart—you can pick up severred limbs, heavy furniture, or even flaming chickens to keep the pressure on. It manages to capture a specific brand of dark humor, where the screams of your character are just as important as the weight of your war hammer.

Chivalry 2- Horse raiders picture — Chivalry 2- Horse raiders

Variety in the Vanguard

The progression system is actually resourceful for a freebie, offering four distinct base classes that branch into specialized subclasses. Whether you want to be a tanky Knight holding a choke point or a high-mobility Vanguard flanking with a two-handed sword, there is a clear mechanical difference in how you approach the battlefield. The inclusion of the Tenosian Empire update also brings mounted combat into the mix, adding a layer of high-speed horse-to-horse melee to the classic infantry sieges.

Claiming the Final Drops of 2025

This 24-hour window for Chivalry 2 is the peak of the final stretch of Epic’s holiday promotion. Given the high player count required for the best maps, this massive influx of new users today means the servers will be packed for the holiday weekend. Make sure to grab it before the timer hits zero tomorrow morning, as the New Year’s Day giveaway is rumored to be the last “big” drop before the store returns to its weekly cadence for 2026.

End of the Year: Ubisoft MongoDB Meltdown

Ubisoft Outage

By

Mat

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31 December, 2025

Tom Clancy;s Rainbow Six Siege had severe problem recently picture — Tom Clancy;s Rainbow Six Siege had severe problem recently

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

Ubisoft just spent the tail end of December 2025 in a total defensive crouch. What started as a weird glitch in Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege turned into a full-blown backend catastrophe that forced the publisher to pull the plug on global servers for over 24 hours.¹ This wasn’t a standard “the servers are acting up” situation; this was a fundamental compromise of their internal logic.

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege Ubisoft Outage picture — Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege Ubisoft Outage

The Anatomy of the Breach

The chaos became undeniable on December 27, 2025. Players logging in were greeted with a surreal scene: their accounts were suddenly flush with approximately 2 billion R6 Credits—the game’s premium currency—and virtually every cosmetic item in the game was unlocked. For context, 15,000 credits usually retail for about $100, making the injected value per player essentially infinite.

MongoDB Ubisoft Outage picture — MongoDB Ubisoft Outage

Beyond the “Christmas come early” vibes, the attackers gained administrative control over the game’s moderation tools. They didn’t stop at credits:

Automated Chaos: The global ban ticker, usually reserved for catching cheaters, started broadcasting cryptic messages and Shaggy lyrics.
Account Manipulation: Attackers were actively banning and unbanning players at random, effectively gatekeeping the game from legitimate users.
Total Shutdown: By 11:00 AM UTC, Ubisoft realized the house was on fire and took Siege and its Marketplace entirely offline to prevent the total collapse of their economy.

The Technical Failure: MongoBleed and Weak APIs

While Ubisoft has been tight-lipped about the exact entry point, security researchers have pointed to a critical vulnerability tracked as CVE-2025-14847, colloquially known as MongoBleed. This exploit allowed threat actors to infiltrate internal databases and Git repositories.

Vector	Impact
CVE-2025-14847	Deep access to internal source code and database functions.
API Vulnerabilities	Broken authentication on endpoints allowed unauthorized administrative calls.
Backend Audit	Attackers essentially had the keys to the kingdom, including the ability to gift currency and modify account states.

The consensus among the technical crowd is that Ubisoft’s backend infrastructure lacked the necessary authorization checks on key API endpoints, allowing the attackers to masquerade as high-level administrators.

The Rollback and Current Status

Ubisoft’s solution was a scorched-earth policy. They initiated a global rollback of all player data to its state before December 27, 10:49 UTC.

Financial Impact: Every transaction made during the breach window was nuked.While Ubisoft confirmed players wouldn’t be banned for spending the “fake” credits, the items bought with them have been removed.
The “Two-Week” Recovery: As of December 31, 2025, servers are largely back online, but the Marketplace remains shuttered. Many players are reporting missing legitimate items—collateral damage of the rollback—which Ubisoft claims will take up to two weeks to rectify.
Infrastructure Stress: Users are still seeing “unplanned issues” on the official status page as the services ramp back up to handle the holiday player load.

The reality here is pretty grim for a triple-A studio. Managing a live-service game for a decade only to have the entire backend subverted by a known database vulnerability suggests a massive gap in their security-aware culture. It’s a reminder that even the biggest players in the industry are often running on legacy systems held together by duct tape and hope.

Physics-Based Headaches: Trine is Free Today

Free Epic Games

By

Mat

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30 December, 2025

Trine Classic Collection Free on Epic Today picture — Trine Classic Collection Free on Epic Today

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

While the internet keeps chasing ghosts with fake AAA leak lists, Epic is actually delivering a four-course meal of high-fantasy competence. Today, December 30, the Trine Classic Collection hit the zero-dollar mark on the Epic Games Store. You’ve got until December 31 at 11:00 AM ET to claim the first four games of a series that basically defined the “physics-puzzler-with-swords” archetype. If you prefer Valve’s ecosystem or missed the window, the Steam Store is currently running a 75% discount through January 5, though even that feels pricey compared to the secondary market. A quick glance at G2A (affiliate link) shows keys floating around the $10 range, but honestly, paying anything for this today is a failure of basic consumer awareness.

Trine Epic Mystery Game - gaming time picture — Trine Epic Mystery Game – gaming time

Cheeese, Boxes, and Grappling Hooks: How Trine Actually Plays

The gimmick is simple: you control a Wizard who conjures boxes, a Thief with a grappling hook, and a Knight who hits things. The reality is much more chaotic. Trine thrives on the fact that its puzzles are “soft.” There isn’t a single correct way to cross a spike pit; if you can stack enough conjured crates into a precarious, wobbling tower and jump off the top before the whole thing collapses, the game counts it. This collection takes you from the hand-drawn beauty of the original Enchanted Edition and Trine 2—widely considered the peak of the genre—into the experimental 3D levels of Trine 3, finally landing on the polished, back-to-basics brilliance of Trine 4. It’s a series that rewards the “street intellectual” approach to gaming—don’t follow the developer’s breadcrumbs if you can just break the engine to get where you’re going.

Multiplayer Friction and Resourceful Cooperation

This is strictly better with friends, but it’s also a quick way to find out which of your buddies has zero spatial awareness. The three-player co-op turns every bridge-building exercise into a debate about weight distribution and momentum. It is a resourceful addition to any library because it scales perfectly; you can play it with kids who just want to swing on ropes or with a dedicated group trying to optimize every movement. Since these games are optimized for efficiency rather than raw power, you don’t need a top-tier rig to see the hand-painted assets in their best light. It’s an easy pick for the holiday break that provides dozens of hours of gameplay without demanding you learn a complex combat system or sit through endless cinematic fluff.

The Epic Games 2025 Holiday Purge is Now

Epic Sales

By

Mat

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29 December, 2025

Sucide Squad - Kill the Justice League picture — Sucide Squad - Kill the Justice League

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

The annual inventory dump (until 8th of January 2026) on the Epic Games Store is less about holiday cheer and more about the cold mathematics of moving digital units. For those of us tracking the daily Mystery Games, which recently tossed out heavy-hitters like Hogwarts Legacy and Disco Elysium, the current sale is the final mathematical correction of the year. The mystery continues, but the storefront has effectively become a high-stakes clearance rack where the raw percentages finally favor the consumer.

The AAA Market Correction

High-profile releases from the 2024 and 2025 cycles are seeing early price collapses as publishers scramble to meet end-of-year targets. We see titles like Alan Wake 2 and Dying Light 2 Stay Human – Reloaded Edition sitting at 70%, a significant drop for software that still carries a high level of technical polish. Even the much-discussed Star Wars Outlaws and Assassin’s Creed Mirage have hit that same 70% floor, signaling a desperate need to inflate player numbers before the next fiscal quarter begins.

Assassin's Creed Mirage - Medieval Baghdad — Assassin’s Creed Mirage – Medieval Baghdad

Meanwhile, the latest entries in perennial franchises like EA SPORTS FC 26 and EA SPORTS Madden NFL 26 have already reached a 60% discount, proving that the annual sports cycle is a race to the bottom once the initial launch window closes. For those looking at the newest bets, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, ARC Raiders, and Borderlands 4 are holding steady at 20%, offering a minor reprieve for early adopters who missed the initial window.

Dying Light 2 Stay Human - Reloaded Edition Epic Sale Holidaz picture — Dying Light 2 Stay Human – Reloaded Edition Epic Sale Holidaz

The Liquidation Ledger: 2025 Holiday Discounts

Discount	Featured Games
95% Off	Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League
90% Off	Riders Republic, Ghost Recon Breakpoint, Civ VI, Borderlands 3, AC Origins, AC Valhalla, WRC 9, Watch Dogs 2
85% Off	Alan Wake Remastered, GR Wildlands, Jedi: Survivor, RIDE 5, Mafia: Definitive Edition, AC Odyssey, AC Unity, Far Cry 5, Far Cry 4, Dying Light Essentials
80% Off	The Witcher 3 CE, Mortal Kombat 1, The Crew Motorfest, Dead Island 2, Batman Arkham Knight, Batman Arkham City GOTY, It Takes Two, Mafia II & III DE
75% Off	Red Dead Redemption 2, Overcooked! 2, Hell Let Loose, Anno 1800, Jurassic World Evo 2, Slime Rancher, 3DMark
70% Off	Alan Wake 2, Dying Light 2, Outlast Trials, Star Wars Outlaws, AC Mirage, Cities: Skylines, Remnant II
60-67% Off	Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves (67%), GTA Trilogy (67%), Cyberpunk 2077 (65%), Spider-Man Remastered (60%), God of War (60%), Death Stranding DC (60%)
50% Off	GTA V Enhanced, F1 25, AC Shadows, The Last of Us Part I, Silent Hill 2, Red Dead Redemption, Planet Coaster 2
30-40% Off	Ghost of Tsushima DC (40%), Frostpunk 2 (40%), Civilization VII (35%), Manor Lords (35%), Battlefield 6 (30%)
10-25% Off	Cronos: The New Dawn (25%), Expedition 33 (20%), Stellar Blade (20%), Borderlands 4 (20%), Football Manager 26 (10%)

Cyberpunk 2077 Update 2.0 - Riding a Motorcycle 1 — Cyberpunk 2077 Update 2.0 – Riding a Motorcycle 1

Seeing software like Suicide Squad hit a 95% discount is a grim autopsy of a failed project, essentially offering the title for the price of a coffee. However, the real value for a cautious buyer lies in the 60-80% brackets where polished experiences like Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3 are sitting at price points that actually respect your bank account. Take the 20% rewards and run, but don’t expect the industry to stay this vulnerable forever.