The only routes that actually exist
Free Steam games come from a small number of legitimate channels, and everything outside them is either a scam or a key reseller. Knowing the real list saves a lot of time.
- 100% off promotions — a paid game temporarily discounted to zero and free to keep permanently.
- Free-to-play titles — permanently free by design, no claim needed, monetised inside the game.
- Free weekends and free trials — temporary access that ends with the event, keeping nothing.
- Developer and publisher giveaways — keys handed out directly, at events, or through their own channels.
- Demos and playtests — a slice of the game, listed separately from the full product.
How a 100% off promotion works
This is the one worth caring about. A publisher sets the discount to 100% for a defined window, and any account that completes the order during that window owns the game permanently — updates, achievements, trading cards and all. Once the window closes the price returns, and there is no way to claim it retroactively.
Adding it to a wishlist or a cart does nothing. The order has to complete, which takes about ten seconds. This is the entire skill involved: the difficulty is never the claiming, it is being aware the promotion is running at all.
Why they are so easy to miss
Free-to-keep promotions are frequently unannounced, sometimes last only 24 hours, and rarely occupy the Steam front page for long. The store rotates aggressively, and a promotion that starts while you are asleep can be over before you next open the client. There is no built-in notification for "a game just became free", and wishlist alerts only fire for games you already wishlisted — which, by definition, excludes everything you have never heard of.
The result is that most people learn about these promotions from a screenshot after they end. Catching them is not about being clever; it is about something checking the store more often than a person reasonably can.
What a tracker changes
A tracker polls the storefronts, spots the moment a title drops to zero, and either tells you or claims it for you. That converts a timing problem into a background process. Boostr watches Steam for 100% off promotions and claims them to your linked account automatically, and it tracks the Epic, GOG and Amazon Prime Gaming giveaways alongside so that the whole free-game surface is in one place.
The claiming distinction matters between stores. Steam promotions are ordinary zero-value store orders and can be completed programmatically for your account; the Epic, GOG and Prime giveaways are tracked and surfaced so you can claim them yourself before the window closes.
What free games do not do for you
Two expectations are worth correcting. First, claiming free games does not lift the limited-account restriction — the order value is zero, so it contributes nothing toward the spending threshold that unlocks trading, the market and friend invites. A library of a hundred free games on a fresh account is still a limited account.
Second, free-to-play games do not behave like free-to-keep games on trading cards. Free-to-play card drops are granted in proportion to money spent inside the game, not playtime, so idling one produces nothing. A game claimed at 100% off, by contrast, drops cards exactly like a game you paid for.
Avoiding the obvious traps
Anything offering free Steam games in exchange for a login, a survey, a "generator" or a trade is a phishing operation, without exception. Valve does not distribute free games through third-party sites, and a page asking for your Steam credentials to give you a game is asking for your inventory. The genuine routes above are the complete set, and all of them run on Steam itself.