Key Takeaways
- Ubisoft is giving away For Honor Standard Edition free to keep permanently on PC via Ubisoft Connect, as part of its 40th anniversary celebration.
- The offer ends September 28, 2026 at 4:30 PM — after that, the game returns to its normal $29.99 price tag.
- You need a free Ubisoft account and the Ubisoft Connect app to claim and run the game.
- The Standard Edition includes the base game and 14 playable heroes.
- This is a PC-only offer through Ubisoft Connect — not available on Steam, Epic, or console.
- Note: For Honor no longer supports Linux or Steam Deck following a recent anti-cheat update.
- The giveaway is timed alongside the Year 10 Season 3 Blood Hunt update, which added Ranked Dominion on September 10.
Ubisoft is handing out a free $30 game and all you have to do is click a button before September 28. For Honor Standard Edition is currently free to claim and keep permanently on PC via Ubisoft Connect, and it’s one of the better freebies to come out of a major publisher in a while. This isn’t a limited trial or a game going free-to-play — once you claim it, it’s yours forever. The offer is part of Ubisoft’s 40th anniversary celebrations and won’t be around long, so if you’ve been even slightly curious about the game, now is the obvious time to grab it.
How to Claim For Honor for Free
The process is about as simple as these things get:
- Make sure you have a Ubisoft account (free to create at ubisoft.com if you don’t have one)
- Download and install the Ubisoft Connect app on your PC
- Head to the official For Honor page on the Ubisoft Store and claim the game while it’s listed at 100% off
- The game will be permanently added to your Ubisoft Connect library
The promotion runs until September 28, 2026 at 4:30 PM. If you miss that window, the game goes back to its standard $29.99 price. One important thing to flag: this is a PC-only offer via Ubisoft Connect. It’s not available through Steam, Epic Games Store, or any console platform. You also need Ubisoft Connect installed and running to play the game after you claim it.
There’s one other catch worth knowing upfront. For Honor dropped support for Linux and Steam Deck earlier this year due to an anti-cheat update. If you were planning to play on Deck, this giveaway unfortunately doesn’t help you there. For everyone on a standard Windows PC, you’re good to go.
What Is For Honor?
For Honor launched back in 2017 and has been quietly building a dedicated player base ever since. It’s a medieval melee fighting game with a heavy multiplayer focus — one of those titles that’s genuinely hard to compare to anything else in the market, which is part of why it still has an audience nearly a decade after launch. SteamDB data shows it regularly pulls in more than 5,000 concurrent players on Steam alone, and that’s not counting the Ubisoft Connect player base.
The basic pitch: multiple ancient warrior civilizations — Knights, Vikings, Samurai, Wu Lin, and Outlanders — have somehow ended up in the same fictional world and are fighting each other constantly. It’s deliberately unrealistic in premise, but the combat system underneath it is genuinely technical and grounded in real historical weapon techniques.
The Art of Battle Combat System
What separates For Honor from most PvP games is its three-directional attack and guard system, called the Art of Battle. You’re not just mashing buttons and hoping for the best — you choose the direction of your attack (left, right, or top), and your opponent has to actively guard in the matching direction to block it. Reading your opponent, feinting attacks, timing parries, and chaining combos together creates a surprisingly cerebral duel experience, especially in 1v1 modes where a single mistake can flip the whole match.
It’s a system that has a real learning curve, and some reviewers have noted that it can feel frustrating to learn at first. But for the kind of player who enjoys mastering something technical, the depth is genuinely there in a way that most other PvP games don’t offer.
Game Modes
The Standard Edition you’re getting for free includes the full mode lineup:
- 1v1 Duels — Pure technical combat, where every decision counts
- 2v2 Brawls — Team up against another pair
- 4v4 Dominion — The flagship mode, where two teams fight to capture and hold zones while eliminating enemy players
- Story Mode — A single-player campaign covering all three original factions, giving you a good way to learn the mechanics before jumping online
Heroes and Factions
The Standard Edition comes with 14 playable heroes out of the gate. The full roster across all factions now sits at over 39 heroes, each with their own weapon, fighting style, and mechanics — but you’ll have a solid starting selection to work with. Additional heroes and cosmetics can be unlocked via in-game steel currency or seasonal content over time. The five factions — Knights, Samurai, Vikings, Wu Lin, and Outlanders — each have a distinct visual identity and playstyle, giving you plenty of variety to find something that clicks.
What’s New in For Honor Right Now: Year 10 Season 3 Blood Hunt
Ubisoft timed this giveaway well. For Honor just launched its Year 10 Season 3 update called Blood Hunt on September 10, which is one of the bigger updates the game has seen in a while. The headliner is the addition of Ranked Dominion — a fully competitive version of the game’s most popular 4v4 mode, complete with a rank ladder and meaningful cosmetic rewards.
Here’s how the competitive system works in Blood Hunt:
- Seven rank tiers: Bronze, Silver, Gold, Diamond, Platinum, Masters, and Grand Master
- Each rank has five divisions to climb through before advancing to the next tier
- The top 100 players in Masters rank earn the Grand Master title — the most prestigious badge in the game
- Reaching Gold earns you a full exclusive armor set for the season’s designated hero
- Reaching Diamond earns an additional ornament and a unique weapon set
- Ranked matches use a fixed map pool for competitive fairness
- You need at least Reputation 5 to enter Ranked Dominion (solo or 2-player teams only — 3 and 4-player groups can’t queue together)
Ranked Duel also exited beta status with this update and is now a full part of the competitive ecosystem alongside Ranked Dominion. Between the two ranked modes, there’s now a more meaningful ladder to climb for competitive players than For Honor has ever had.
The Blood Hunt season also introduces the Keeper of Chains hero skin for the Conqueror hero, a full 100-tier Battle Pass covering all 39 heroes, and two Halloween-themed limited-time modes running in October — Endless March (October 1–15) and Spooky Slasher (October 15–22). For a game that launched in 2017, there’s a genuinely active content schedule still running.
Is For Honor Worth Playing in 2026?
At the price of free? Absolutely yes, even just to try it. The story mode alone gives you a few hours of content to work through while learning the combat system, and the Art of Battle mechanics are unlike anything else in the PvP space right now. The game has a reputation for being unforgiving to new players, and that’s fair — but the Floor is much lower when you’re not paying $30 to find out whether it clicks for you.
The player base is still active enough to find matches, the seasonal update schedule is real and ongoing, and the addition of proper Ranked modes with Blood Hunt gives longtime players a new goal to work toward while bringing fresh faces up to speed through regular play. If For Honor ever made sense as a “just try it” game, this is the moment.
The one honest caveat: if your main interest is ranked competitive play, expect a learning curve before you’re ready to queue for it. The Art of Battle system rewards time investment, and jumping into Ranked Dominion cold will be a rough experience. The story mode and casual Dominion are genuinely good entry points before you start worrying about climbing the ladder.
Ubisoft’s 40th Anniversary Sale Is Running Alongside the Giveaway
The For Honor giveaway isn’t the only thing Ubisoft is doing for its 40th anniversary. A wider sale is also running across the Ubisoft Store, and if you use the code UBI40 at checkout, you can stack an additional 20% off on top of existing sale discounts. If you’ve been eyeing other Ubisoft titles, now is the time to check what’s marked down.
Other Free PC Games Available This September
If you’re a regular freebie hunter, September has been a good month. Beyond the For Honor giveaway, Crystal Crisis is also available to claim and keep free on Steam until September 21 — it’s a very different game from For Honor (a crossover anime fighter), but it falls in the same fighting game genre and is worth picking up if you’re already claiming free games this month. Fanatical also has a $1 Mystery Crate Bundle for Blood of the Dawnwalker running right now, which could net you a key for the newly released open-world game at a steep discount if you’re willing to take the gamble on mystery crate odds.
None of them are a $30 AAA game going permanently free, though. For Honor is the headline deal of the month by a considerable margin.
Speaking of big gaming news this week, if you want to keep track of everything happening across the industry, check out our breakdown of Microsoft’s response to the Xbox Game Pass day-one removal rumors — another story about the future of how we access games. And for Switch 2 owners, the Resident Evil 2, 3, and 4 remakes coming to Switch 2 in October are well worth having on your radar.
Don’t wait on the For Honor claim. September 28 at 4:30 PM is the hard cutoff, and it only takes a couple of minutes to add it to your library. Even if you don’t play it immediately, it’ll be there whenever you want it.