New World is free to play this weekend. Here’s how to play

By Otto Kratky April 7, 2022

Anyone who’s been thinking about sinking tens of hundreds of hours into Amazon’s MMO, New World, can give the game a test drive starting today on Steam. Amazon Game Studios is hosting a free weekend for New World, letting players try the game out for a limited time and keep their progress if they decide to buy in.

New World‘s Steam free weekend started today at 10 a.m. PT and will continue through April 11 at 10 a.m. PT. According to a FAQ for the game’s Steam free weekend, players won’t be limited in the content they can access. The entirety of New World will be available over the course of the next five days to anyone who wants to see what it’s all about via Steam. Players that pick up the game during this time period will also carry all of the progress they make over if they decide to purchase it after the free weekend ends.

If keeping progress wasn’t enough, New World is also going to be heavily discounted until April 18 at 10 a.m. PT. Both the game’s standard and deluxe editions will be available for 40% off on Steam and Amazon. Players who don’t purchase the game by the end of the free weekend won’t have to worry about their characters being deleted either. They’ll still be there if they ever decide to pick the game up at a later date, according to the free weekend’s FAQ.

As for why Amazon Game Studios is hosting a free weekend for New World at all, it could be to give the game’s player base a much-needed kick in the pants. Its concurrent player counts are way down compared to its launch-period peak. According to Steam DB, in the past 24 hours, New World‘s peak concurrent player count was just shy of 30,000. The game’s performance today is surprising considering that this past September, Amazon Game Studios had to block the creation of new characters to free up server space.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Otto Kratky is a freelance writer with many homes. You can find his work at Digital Trends, GameSpot, and Gamepur. If he's…

Gaming

You can play this 2018 open-world hit for free if you have PlayStation Plus

Arthur Morgan walks into a burning house in Red Dead Redemption 2.

If you somehow haven't played the 2018 open-world classic Red Dead Redemption 2 yet and you have a PlayStation Plus subscription, we have good news. PlayStation announced in a blog post Wednesday that the game will be available for free for the Plus program's Extra and Premium tiers.

Subscribers can play this massive hit, along with 12 other games, starting on May 21. Users will also get access to Red Dead Online, the game's multiplayer experience that allows players to create their own character and mess around inside the world as they see fit -- from forming a group of outlaws to rob people on the road to hunting animals.

Gaming

3 free video games you should play this weekend (May 10-12)

A titan wielding a grenade launcher in Destiny 2..

Whenever we recommend games at Digital Trends, we tend to go heavy on titles available on subscription services like Xbox Game Pass. Rather than telling our readers to buy new games, we always try to find ones that might be on services they're already paying for. Still, that doesn't cover every player. There are plenty of more casual gaming fans who aren't subscribed to any service that offers extra games. We don't want to leave them out, do we?

If you're in that category, or you're simply strapped for cash, we've got some recommendations for some free games you can try this weekend. I don't mean "free with a subscription" either. I'm talking about games that will cost you nothing to start, even if you decide you want to spend money on them later. From a mobile game I can't get enough of to a a popular MMO that just made all of its DLC free, these are three free games you can dive into this weekend.
Destiny 2

Gaming

This precious Game Pass adventure let me see the world through my cat’s eyes

A cat holds bread in Little Kitty, Big City.

I recently moved into a new apartment, graduating from a boxy one-bedroom to a much larger two-bedroom railroad-style space. It’s been a great change for me, but it's my cat who is thriving. She’s no longer a paperweight glued to my couch. She spends the days bouncing between rooms, jumping off of furniture, sneaking into cabinets, and peering out windows. Her entire world has tripled and she’s become a new creature because of it.

As fate would have it, that would also be the subject of the first game I played in my new apartment. Little Kitty, Big City is an adorable new indie game about a black housecat accidentally finding itself lost in town after falling off its windowsill. Had I played it in another context, I might have been tempted to write it off as a cute, but light indie curiosity (the kind of game that's perfect for Xbox Game Pass). Instead, it’s a classic case of the right place, right time for me. For one precious afternoon, I could see my cat’s big new world through her eyes.
On the prowl
Little Kitty, Big City is sure to draw some immediate parallels to Stray thanks to its feline hero. The two share plenty of DNA, but the big difference is that Little Kitty, Big City is more of a Saturday morning cartoon than the brainier sci-fi of Stray. As soon as I gain control of my fallen hero, I’m let loose in a small open city where I can get up to the same slapstick hijinks that my own cat annoyingly seems to love.