Brink free to play this weekend

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 5 August, 2011

Steam users celebrate QuakeCon.

Bethesda has made the Steam version of Splash Damage first-person shooter Brink free to play for the weekend.

You can grab the game from Steam now.

The promotion is in celebration of QuakeCon, id Software's annual get-together, which is happening in the US right now.

The recently-released Agents of Change DLC is included in the free to play deal.

Brink will return to its not free to play status at 1pm Sunday, 7th August – that's 9pm for us.

Picture of Wesley.

About Wesley Yin-Poole

Wesley is Eurogamer's news editor. He likes news, interviews, and more news. He also likes Street Fighter more than anyone can get him to shut up about it.

Read more articles from Wesley by visiting the Wesley Yin-Poole archive page.

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Comments (19) Latest comment 10 months ago

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  • TeeHee #1 10 months ago

    Pass.

  • Bradach #2 10 months ago

    nice. i think i'll give this a shot so!

  • AaronTurner #3 10 months ago

    Tried it out, whilst the core game seems like it may be fun, the bots stand around like they are brain dead and the game runs very poorly.

  • Haloboy #4 10 months ago

    Tried it. Couldn't get past the dull gameplay, dodgy as hell bots and the fact it runs at 10fps. Decided to free run my ass away from it. Plain to see why it's currently free to play and servers have less than 100 people playing in total.

  • Bradach #5 10 months ago

    @AaronTurner
    Game runs very poorly
    Do you mean its badly optomised? my PC is pretty powerful and i get a good 50 FPS on crysis2 at EXTREME. do you think it'll run smoothly on my PC?

  • HL706 #6 10 months ago

    dead, horse, a, flogging, ?

    rearrange :-)

  • FTM #7 10 months ago

    its still too much!!

  • Haloboy #8 10 months ago

    Also. Officially celebrating QuakeCon with the free release of BrinkCon may have sounded like a great idea. It wasn't. It just ensured I never ever buy the full game.

  • AaronTurner #9 10 months ago

    Bradach, I couldn't comment on how the game will play on your machine. Admittedly my computer is pretty humble but the game doesn't look fantastic and it really bogs down in parts. It's one of those games that I feel my machine should be able to play fairly effortlessly but it can't.

  • Zyklonbzombie #10 10 months ago

    Gave it a shot, and ended up buying it at half price. Either Brink has seriously improved since release, or the vitriol for this game (and Eurogamer's review) is rather exaggerated and uncalled for.

  • CARL05 #11 10 months ago

    Runs absolutely fine on my computer - Intel i5 motherboard (3.30 GHz), Nvidia Geforce 550, 4GB ram.
    Still the gameplay isn't really that great but then again I was using the bots and didn't allow other users to join my campaign.

    Main gripe with it really was that half the time I didn't know what the objective was or where I was supposed to be going, the mini-map was only used to show mines and players.

    On the other hand though I loved the art style and the controls don't seem bad, might give it another go later.

  • Murton #12 10 months ago

    "Gave it a shot, and ended up buying it at half price. Either Brink has seriously improved since release, or the vitriol for this game (and Eurogamer's review) is rather exaggerated and uncalled for."

    It's a little of both. The game is average, not great but not at all bad either. It's basically UT3 with parkour a class/perk system and better balanced weapons, as a stripped down 20 quid download it would have been a smash hit, as a retail title I think it was a little disappointing.

    Single player and co-op are genuinely enjoyable once you get into it, standard MP however is very difficult owing to a broken match-making system, lack of online lobby and shoddy netcode, all three unforgivable when your product is an arena based shooter.

  • LR100 #13 10 months ago

    Last time I played Brink, I played a mission with my team only having 3 human players including myself, the rest were bots, against an enemy team comprised solely of bots. We some how managed to fail the first few objectives, leaving us to defend the last objective, which was some data card or something. It was pretty much a cul-de-sac and the bots periodically ran into the area and were quickly mowed down. We had to sit and do this for 15 minutes until the timer run out. It was cripplingly dull.
    Edited by LR100 at 05/08/11 @ 14:53

  • Sharzam #14 10 months ago

    It runs smoothly enourgh on my PC and looks ok (althourgh not a fan of the art style). The thing is the gameplay, it feels like it so badly wants to be team fortress 2 but it just doesnt have the comedy or the same fast paced game play to really pull it off.

    Glad it was on this weekend thourgh as meant i got to try it out as been thinking about buying it for a while, but i will not be buying it now.

    edit: Oh and i can see the comment regards to UT3, i sort of agree as i can see things in common but it lacks the brillant fun weapons so UT is the better game.

    edit 2: I dont mean to bash it, its an OK game just not a stand out game and when there are so many stand out games in the Team FPS genre a ok game does not cut it sadly.
    Edited by Sharzam at 05/08/11 @ 16:00

  • PotatoHeadBobby #15 10 months ago

    God, the relentless dissing of this game sure is tiresome.

    Honestly, who would play the full game for FREE and then complain about it? Just keep schtum, yeah?



  • Ziggy_badMonkey #16 10 months ago

    AI issues were sorted with latest patch and bots now do objectives, not had any lag for ages and its still hella fun Co-op and full multi player.
    The endless bashing is getting tiresome, It plays well after all the patches and is one of the best Team based shooters out there if you give it a chance

  • thinktankak69 #17 10 months ago

    Downloaded and tried it, Even though the game was running at a steady 125fps it honestly felt like it was running at a constant 30fps for some stupid reason. I heard about the performance issues that a lot of people had early on regarding this and thought it may have been fixed by now, however i think it's just how the game was made. The game play wasn't for me.

    You have nothing to lose, download it and try it out for yourself and get your own opinion for FREE.

  • MatMan562 #18 10 months ago

    Bought this for a tenner not long ago. Definately worth that price as I'm having a lot of fun with it. I have it on PC and it runs fine for me. If the game really was as bad as everybody would have you believe when it first came out then it's certainly improved dramatically. Definately worth giving it a try this weekend if you've not played it since launch.

  • Harmonica #19 10 months ago

    Bought at release, the playerbase has died off pretty much. With lobbies and matchmaking it'd be a good class based shooter and a decent follow up to the games it wants to be like.

    Sadly without those two things it's a pain to find people playing it and it draws focus to the rather weak other elements.