EA Origin has the old Syndicate, Ultima Underworld I & II games for free until September 3rd.
GOG does as well for that old school DRM free feeling.
I’m not familiar enough with my early 90s Syndicates to tell you if there’s a difference between the EA and GOG offerings (is the EA one a separate game or one of the two GOG is offering or the two rolled into one title?). Just grab 'em all!
One thing to say for me, is that EA Origin was no good in that case for me, because I’ve bought all their games via Retail DVDs and thus have not registered a credit card against them, and they needed one to sell me things for nothing.
GOG, which I’ve never bought anything from, and joined for free games did allow me to buy them. GOG has Syndicate Wars too, which I don’t think EA has.
Syndicate is a great game. Oldie but a goodie.
For those that like to tinker, Underworld Exporter lets you play Ultima Underworld 1 in the Unity engine, with much better graphics overall along with good things like mouselook. The GOG version has a trick, you have to extract the files from game.gog with WinRar or similar program and put them in a UW1 folder somewhere. The edit the .INI file that comes with Underworld Exporter to point to the folder where you extracted the files.
Though it may be too late, I did want to add that if you enjoyed the Syndicate experience, “Satellite Reign” is a pretty recent title that pays homage to it. It can also be played coop, so if you get three other people you could each play one of the unique agents.
I really liked Syndicate and loved Syndicate Wars. It’s a shame Bullfrog went out of business. The name Satellite Reign is a cool homage to the BFG of the Syndicate series, Satellite Rain. But the game itself unfortunately misses the main plot point of the series.
Instead of the player themselves being a syndicate agent in charge of controlling and “recruiting” mindless agents (remote control cyborgs), you control 4 thinking minds with distinct personalities which do not change (but their bodies do). This sounds cool in theory but in practice it greatly reduces your team customization options and makes the game much less fun than the original.
gog has syndicate plus which has the “American revolt” expansion…oh and should you get it my advice is play the original first as revolt assumes you did so becuase you can transfer your max kitted and lvled “characters” over and will hand your ass to you if you didnt …
Suppose someone should mention that the free games this week on Epic are Void Bastards and Yooka-Laylee
Anyone know anything about Yooka-Laylee? Thinking of picking it up to play with wife and/or kid
I haven’t played but I remember some people* were disappointed that it wasn’t hard enough or something compared to Banjo-Kazooie. No system of lives lost or Game Over screens. This maybe be a point in its favor if playing with the spouse or child. Likewise, people complained about there not being enough levels but that could again be a point in its favor since you can finish in a reasonable time. Also, since it’s free, it’s not as though you’re not getting your money’s worth. Aside from that, big ole colorful 3D platformer with open levels.
*Where “some people” were largely people invested enough in Banjo-Kazooie to Kickstart a “spiritual successor” and care much more about Banjo-Kazooie than the average game player.
When it is free is there any reason to not pick it up?
Less clutter?
I have maybe nine games in my epic library, and two of them were from before I realized that if I took them all, my epic games list would be unruly at best.
So my epic library is like seven kickass games I’m excited to play, plus two piece of s*** garbage games I will never play but were free! And yep, the clutter of those two games I’ll never play does actually bug me.
I could probably remove or at least hide them from my list, so I guess the only reason would be less clutter and I’m lazy?
EDIT: epic free games have really stepped up in my game library. Since building my first gaming computer and finally getting a (shitty) video card a few months ago, I have 16 games in my overall library, and I’ve played two of them so far. Control, which was very good. And now subnautica, which is sublime. Both free on epic.
Yeah, I have so many free games amongst my various libraries I will look at a game and if I think there’s little chance I’ll ever actually play it, I’ll pass. I have enough stuff in them already without adding things I don’t even like. I already know I won’t play everything at this point, there’s too much.
I think I said this earlier but when I was a child if I thought I’d have this kind of problem as an adult my head would have probably exploded.
I end up taking everything free on my accounts even though I know there’s a 99% chance I won’t play it. I guess that’s not terribly logical but I don’t mind the clutter so much and maybe there’s a remote chance I’ll read something about the game in the future that will make me interested and then realize that I had it for free all along (this has happened a few times).
I get the mindset; that’s how I treat my DVR. Tons of clutter, tons of stuff I’d like to watch in theory but much of it I just end up deleting after they’ve been sitting there for months.
It’s actually kind of weird that I’m the polar opposite with games vs TV/movies.
I’m about 3,500 games too late to start getting picky now 
I actually do sometimes find games I own are unexpectedly interesting or good candidate to install for my younger kid. Or my older one takes an interest via Steam Family sharing. Obviously most just sit there, though.
If you are feeling real petty you pick up games on Epic or Steam because they still have to pay the publisher/developer for the key. Though they may only pay a flat rate, and one person on Reddit says they only pay when a game is actually installed, so as stated, it’s likely a very petty reason.
GOG has a handy list of free games available for you to “stay home”. A lot of old and/or janky titles but there’s 32 of them so something might catch your fancy yet.