Celebrate Labor Day by playing Civilization 7 for free

The Labor Day weekend is upon us (in Canada and the US, anyway, and we’ll be sure to spare a thought for our UK colleagues who will be working on Monday) and holy cow, it is about time. If you find yourself in need of something to do, here’s a thought: Play Civilization 7, because it’s free to play on Steam until September 10.

Civ 7’s had kind of a rough go of things since it launched in early 2025. It made some big changes to the formula that didn’t go over well with a significant portion of the fan base, the UI was almost universally unpopular, and performance was dodgy.

Firaxis has been banging away on it ever since, to mixed results: A major update released in May brought a big bump in player numbers on Steam, but the reactions expressed via Steam reviews were almost literally split down the middle. Civ 7’s Steam rating remains “mixed,” with only 48% positive user reviews, while concurrent player numbers on the platform are still running neck-and-neck with the 16-year-old Civilization 5.

Civ 5 is much beloved but I imagine Firaxis and Take-Two would like to see people move on.

Ah, but here’s the counterpoint: It’s free. Just go around to Steam and click the “Play Game” button, and after some requisite amount of downloading, you’re playing Civ 7 without spending a penny. It’s hard to go wrong, really.

If the past year-and-a-half of updates have got Civilization 7 to a point where you think to yourself, ‘Yes, I would like to play this game all the time,’ you can also pick up the standard and deluxe editions for half price until September 17: That’s $35/£30/€35 for the former, and $50/£45/€50 for the latter.

The Civ 7 development team (a small part of it, anyway) will also be discussing what comes next during a livestream from PAX on September 5—you can catch that on YouTube, Twitch, and Facebook.