how do I know if I am given a free game?

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NoodlePunk 9 Aug @ 10:31pm

Recently Heretic + Hexen remaster dropped and everyone who already owned Hexen was given the remaster for free. I only found out via gog as newer games pop up at the top of your library. On steam I got 0 alerts and would've never known.
So is there anyway to know when something new is added to your library? Other games could be added to my library by other devs and I might not know they are there

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Showing 1-3 of 3 comments

rawWwRrr 9 Aug @ 11:20pm

There's nothing for you to toggle, if that's what you're asking. It's really up to the developer and Steam to provide a proper announcement to all those who were given the new game.

Rockstar released their GTAV Enhanced version earlier in the year. They gave it away for free to anyone who owned the original GTAV and issued a pre-load for it. This caused it to appear in the client's library view as a pre-load notification. This caused a fervor for many saw it as an ad, collusion between Rockstar and Valve to push an unsolicited advertisement for a controversial game into everyone's client.

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3435684026
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/discussions/forum/0/591765076067777540/
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/discussions/forum/1/591764935569100629/

Naturally the claims were unfounded but those are just two examples of many pissed off users.

With Heretic+Hexen, though, it was just added with no pre-load, so there was no cause for it to be announced like the GTAV Enhanced was. At the very least, I would have expected Steam to have a yellow alert appear for everyone that was affected to bring it their attention. Announcing it through the various games' News posts wouldn't have been sufficient given few people actually subscribe to those feeds.

I told those I knew who owned it as they had no clue either.

NoodlePunk 10 Aug @ 7:09am

Originally posted by rawWwRrr:
At the very least, I would have expected Steam to have a yellow alert appear for everyone that was affected to bring it their attention.

This. Who knows what other games we've gotten for free as some people have MASSIVE libraries. I would think we'd get an alert like we do when a dev removes a game from our library. I'm glad I read news on GOG otherwise I'd be oblivious that I have a remaster.
As for the gta5 thing, its crazy that people use anything to loose their minds over. IMO it's not anymore "controversial" than an episode of South Park.