After two weeks’ initial run of Crazy Free Weekends, where we gave you more than 25 000 (!) free games, we’ve gathered your feedback and work on new features and improvements. We are taking a short break to implement the changes you’ve suggested — and much more.
Crazy Free Weekends is Kinguin’s initiative to gift the gamers with free video games on every single weekend. Until now, we gave away over 200 different titles in more than 25 000 copies in total. You only had to log in on Kinguin.net and click the “Claim” button. In theory. More on that later.
Every hour we gave you a different free game.
Our selection included such mega hits as Battlefield 4, Cities: Skylines, Prey or Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. There were timeless classics as well: The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, Dragon Age: Origins, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.
We also wanted to introduce you to underappreciated games or indie gems, so our drops included Outlast, Beholder, For the King, Child of Light, and more. In the end, we believe our selection had at least a couple of games that any player would enjoy.
Why do we do it? Out of passion. We do it because we play and it’s something we’d like to take part in as gamers. We’re quite proud of what we’ve accomplished, being a relatively small and self-funded company. We always want to give you more, and we put as much effort as possible.
We aimed high, but that’s also why it was a bumpy ride.
Not everything went as well as we hoped. On the first week, we were forced to stop the giveaway due to a massive bot attack. Even after dealing with it and introducing new safety measures, the traffic was so high that our servers started to sweat and tremble. And even though we dealt with this as well, some of you still weren’t able to try and claim a game, whilst some claimed dozens.
We had 25 000 games to give away, but so many of you clicked the “Claim” button the moment it appeared that some haven’t even seen it before the drop was depleted. This caused some of you to either think this isn’t a real giveaway or get upset because other gamers managed to grab dozens of games.
Yes, we are aware of this. We’re listening to you carefully. We believe a giveaway this large could give trouble to any company, but the most important thing is: we’re course-correcting every week.
Crazy Free Weekends will be more fair to everyone and games will be easier to claim.
How will we manage that? First of all, you won’t have to wait for the exact second to click the “Claim” button. But we won’t randomly select winners, as many of you suggested. That’s not the point, we don’t want you to rely on luck.
Instead, every day you will be able to collect NinjaKrown coins by visiting Kinguin. They’re going to be free. Then on the weekend, you’ll exchange these coins for free games.
You’ll know what titles will be included every weekend and will be able to decide if you want to spend your coins this hour or wait for the next one.
This way we should be able to avoid a situation where a drop is depleted in a second, or one person gets 10 games and another gets nothing. It’ll be more of a choice than a test of reflexes.
Also, our pre-order deals will continue. Every weekend we’ll propose you a couple of hot upcoming games with free bonuses if you decide to get them.
A big thanks to everyone who participated in our weekends!
We are looking forward to upcoming editions. However, this week we are taking a break from the old format and continue working on the new one. In the meantime, we invite you to our Crazy Free Weekend Hottest Pre-Orders Edition, featuring pre-orders with guaranteed free gifts. Starting Friday afternoon (7 June).
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