Update – December 13, 2021: The deal ends tomorrow, so now’s your last chance to grab the game for free. Original story follows.
City-building games continue to be prolific well past the heyday of SimCity, as the continued success of games like Anno 1800 can attest. Now, Ubisoft is giving you an excuse to dive into the historical series’ back catalogue, as Anno 1404 is now free-to-keep for a limited time.
You can grab Anno 1404 History Edition via Ubisoft from now until December 14 at 6am PST / 9am EST / 2pm GMT. Once it’s claimed, it’ll be in your Ubisoft Connect library forever, just as with any digital game you might purchase. (You can pick up Anno 1404 at a 50% discount right now on Steam, but that version still activates through the Ubisoft client.)
The History Edition of Anno 1404 was released in 2020 as part of the Anno History Collection, which gently updated the original games to run on modern PCs at current resolutions. Anno 1404 History Edition includes both the base game and the Venice expansion, which adds multiplayer options as well as a host of additional content.
Check out a trailer below.
Anno 1800 Season 4 was announced alongside this giveaway, bringing another year of updates and DLC to the current entry in the series.