Squad 44 Goes Free This Weekend, and Old Hands Want You on the Servers

Squad 44 opens up to everyone tomorrow. Offworld's WW2 shooter, the one a lot of us still call Post Scriptum, is free to play on Steam from Thursday, October 8 at 10 AM PT (noon CT) until Monday, October 12 at 10 AM PT. The devs announced it on their Discord first, then made it official in a Steam post on October 3: "It's time to welcome some new players, team up with old friends, and dive into some unforgettable matches."

Again, if you'd rather go in with a group that already knows the maps, there are dozens of units listed on Milsim Units.

The official free weekend art. It says "Tue 12th," but October 12 is a Monday, and the post gives the end time as 10 AM PT that day. Image: Offworld, Squad 44 on Steam.

That's four days of full access with no strings, and the window covers a Friday night and a full weekend, which matters more for this game than you'd think. More on that below.

What you're dropping into

If you've played Squad, the rhythm will feel familiar. You join a squad, you talk constantly, and the team that coordinates usually wins. The Steam page promises 20 large-scale battlefields, more than 150 WW2 weapons, and over 120 vehicles. The headline campaigns are the liberation of the Netherlands and Normandy, with the British 1st Airborne, the US 4th Infantry Division, and the French Army up against the Wehrmacht, the Waffen SS, and the Fallschirmjäger. Australian, Greek, New Zealand, and Polish Airborne forces are in there too.

It's not only Europe, either. This year's patch notes mention Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima, with USMC and Imperial Japanese Army factions, so the Pacific side is worth trying while it costs nothing.

The roles go well past rifleman. A commander can call in gun runs and artillery. Logistics players build the fortifications and emplacements that hold a line together. Tanks take a real crew, with a driver, gunner, and commander each doing their own job. Voice chat runs on two channels, squad radio and local proximity, so you'll hear the enemy shouting behind the hedgerow as often as your own squad lead.

The mode you'll probably see most is Random Offensive, which got a rework and then a round of tuning in Update 2.6 back in February. Matches now start with 45 minutes on the clock instead of 30, the regroup phase between captures dropped from three minutes to two, and the FOB spawn tent works like a rally point and can't go inside a capture zone.

The price, and why today matters

Squad 44 is $3.99 on Steam right now, 80% off its usual $19.99. Steam's countdown has that discount ending at 10 AM PT on October 8, the exact moment the free weekend kicks off. If you already know you want it, today is the cheap day. Nobody has said whether another discount will run during the free weekend.

Let's be honest about the servers

This is a niche game, and the people who play it know it. Steam's own count showed about a hundred players online around lunchtime CT on Wednesday, and recent Steam reviews are sitting at Mixed, with 60% of the last 23 positive. The last patch notes on Steam were Hotfix 2.6.1 on February 18.

The regulars on r/joinsquad44 don't pretend otherwise, but they're also not giving up on it. In a thread titled "There has never been a better time to return to the game!," the pitch was simple: "It is true that there are only enough players to fill one server as of right now. But it's not like you can play on multiple servers at once, so does it really matter to you that other servers are empty if you can play on the full one?"

The same thread had practical advice for North Americans. "For now NA players can focus on playing on Fridays and the weekend, where server population tends to last longer and you can get on earlier." It also had this, which is worth remembering if the NA servers are quiet: "don't be scared to play on EU servers due to ping, 100-200 ping is very playable for most people, it's not as bad as you think it is!"

Players have been asking for exactly this kind of event. In another thread about how to keep the game alive, one reply put it bluntly: "Game should be $5 and do free weekends multiple times a year." This week they're getting both, more or less. So if you've been curious, this is the weekend to jump in. Servers rarely get busier than when the game costs nothing.