DONTNODs Tell Me Why är gratis att behålla till 1 juli

Tell Me Why, the narrative-driven, choice-focused game from DONTNOD Entertainment and publisher Xbox Game Studios, is free to keep on Steam until July 1, 2026. After that, anyone who claimed it keeps it, but the offer closes and the game returns to its usual $19.99.

DONTNOD is the studio behind Life is Strange 1 and 2, Vampyr, Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden, Remember Me, and Jusant, among others. Its work centers on strong writing and player choice, and Tell Me Why runs on both. The game released in August 2020 and scored 78 on Metacritic, with a Very Positive rating from more than 8,000 Steam reviews. One user review described it as a sweet, sad, and complicated story; another credited it with handling sibling love, complicated relationships, and parental issues alongside what it means to be trans in a small town.

The game splits into three chapters, all included in the giveaway. Each chapter pushes further into the supernatural mystery at the center of the story, and player choices throughout decide how it ends. It takes around 10 hours to finish, which makes it a weekend-sized commitment rather than a backlog problem.

This is not a one-off. DONTNOD and Xbox have made Tell Me Why free six years running. The 100% discount lands every June to mark Pride month, both as an event worth celebrating and because the game's themes connect directly to the LGBTQ+ community. Anyone who missed earlier rounds gets another window now, and the game also turns up heavily discounted during major Steam events like the Summer Sale.

The timing helps. Valve's Steam Machine pre-order prices arrived recently and drew the reaction you would expect, which makes free games more useful than usual right now. Steam regularly hands out titles this way, through full giveaways, free weekends, and limited keep-forever offers, and the recent run has covered acclaimed indies and larger releases alike.

I run a channel built around open-world games, so a linear 10-hour narrative title sits outside my usual beat, and I still think this is the easiest claim of the month, because the choice-driven structure is the kind of design that rewards a second playthrough far more than its length suggests. The price after July 1 is only $19.99, but a recurring free window that has held for six years is a clearer signal of how the publisher views the game than any sale ever was.

Claiming it before July 1 costs nothing and locks it into your library permanently, whether you start it this weekend or leave it for later.

Read also, what the Steam Machine does that a PS5 won't all stems from it being a Linux PC running SteamOS. Desktop mode handles browsing and apps, you can pull mods from sites like NexusMods, set up emulation, and play PC-only titles such as Slay the Spire 2 and Meccha Chameleon that never reach the PS5. Early Digital Foundry benchmarks still hand the base PS5 the edge on raw performance, and with a $1,049 starting price, 512 GB of storage, and no controller in the box, those extras only earn their keep if you use them.