New World is free to play this weekend. Here’s how to play

By Otto Kratky April 7, 2022

Anyone who’s been thinking about sinking tens of hundreds of hours into Amazon’s MMO, New World, can give the game a test drive starting today on Steam. Amazon Game Studios is hosting a free weekend for New World, letting players try the game out for a limited time and keep their progress if they decide to buy in.

New World‘s Steam free weekend started today at 10 a.m. PT and will continue through April 11 at 10 a.m. PT. According to a FAQ for the game’s Steam free weekend, players won’t be limited in the content they can access. The entirety of New World will be available over the course of the next five days to anyone who wants to see what it’s all about via Steam. Players that pick up the game during this time period will also carry all of the progress they make over if they decide to purchase it after the free weekend ends.

If keeping progress wasn’t enough, New World is also going to be heavily discounted until April 18 at 10 a.m. PT. Both the game’s standard and deluxe editions will be available for 40% off on Steam and Amazon. Players who don’t purchase the game by the end of the free weekend won’t have to worry about their characters being deleted either. They’ll still be there if they ever decide to pick the game up at a later date, according to the free weekend’s FAQ.

As for why Amazon Game Studios is hosting a free weekend for New World at all, it could be to give the game’s player base a much-needed kick in the pants. Its concurrent player counts are way down compared to its launch-period peak. According to Steam DB, in the past 24 hours, New World‘s peak concurrent player count was just shy of 30,000. The game’s performance today is surprising considering that this past September, Amazon Game Studios had to block the creation of new characters to free up server space.

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Otto Kratky is a freelance writer with many homes. You can find his work at Digital Trends, GameSpot, and Gamepur. If he's…

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