One of the best Star Wars games in years is free on Epic right now

This could be you. For free. | Image: EA / Motive Studios

If you haven’t sampled the delights of Star Wars: Squadrons, the space dogfighting game from EA’s Motive Studio, you might be interested to know it’s available free on the Epic Games Store for the next week. That’s down from its regular price of $39.99.

In case you missed it upon its release in late 2020, Squadrons is a very good (and very hard) spiritual successor to the beloved X-Wing and TIE Fighter space combat games of the ‘90s. But while its single-player campaign is fun enough, the real meat of the experience is in the multiplayer, which includes both team-based and solo game modes.

Which is why it’s a shame that the game’s popularity hasn’t held up enough post-release to ensure you can get into a full multiplayer game whenever you like. There are multiple Reddit threads bemoaning the long wait times to find a game, and SteamDB reports that average online player numbers sit in the low hundreds in any given week (though this is unlikely to show the full picture given the game is also available on other storefronts like Origin, which had a free giveaway of its own last year).

So here’s to hoping this latest free giveaway can provide this otherwise excellent Star Wars game the boost it deserves. At least before Jedi: Survivor inevitably steals the spotlight next year.