System Shock 2's remaster is free on the Epic Games Store this week
Nightdive's 25th Anniversary Remaster is one of two free claims until October 8, alongside the Korean murder-mystery visual novel Buried Stars. Claim either once and you keep it.
The Epic Games Store's weekly giveaway is worth paying attention to this time. System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster is free to claim until October 8, and so is Buried Stars.
What you're getting
System Shock 2 is the 1999 immersive sim that most of the genre has been quietly copying ever since — Prey and BioShock both owe it a great deal. Nightdive Studios' remaster arrived last year and is the version to own: it adds crossplay and co-op multiplayer, broader mod support, extra playstyles and a pile of quality-of-life work on top of the original.
Buried Stars is the stranger pick and arguably the more interesting one. It's a narrative mystery from 2021 set in the collapsed wreckage of a live survival audition show, where the trapped contestants talk to each other and post to social media while they wait to be rescued. If Zero Escape or Steins;Gate is your register, it sits in that neighbourhood.
The usual rules
Claiming is free with an Epic account and needs no subscription. Both offers run until October 8, and anything you claim before then stays in your library permanently — you do not need to install it now.
Why it matters
Epic's giveaways are usually filler. A fully remastered System Shock 2 is not: it's one of the most influential PC games ever made, in the edition that fixed the things that made the original hard to go back to.
Why it matters
System Shock 2 is a foundational PC game and Nightdive's remaster is the easiest way to actually play it today — getting it free for a week is a genuinely useful offer rather than routine storefront filler.