Brink is now free on Steam

Hey, remember Brink? The 2011 first-person shooter from Splash Damage and Bethesda Softworks? Well, that game is now free to play on Windows PC via Steam as of today. So if you fondly remember Brink — or don’t remember it all but want a free game — go ahead and grab it.

Brink’s Steam listing shows it as free to play, but it appears that it’s just straight up “free” and not “free-to-play but with a bunch of microtransactions to monetize it.” There are three pieces of downloadable content available for Brink on Steam: a pair of cosmetics packs if you want to dress up your Brink character in Doom or Fallout clothes; and Agents of Change, which includes additional maps, player abilities and weapon attachments. All that extra content comes to $3.77 currently.

Other versions of Brink on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 are not currently free. On Xbox 360, Brink still costs $19.99. A downloadable version of Brink is not available from the PlayStation Store.

If you’ve never heard of Brink, it was a class-based first-person shooter that aimed to seamlessly blend single-player with cooperative and competitive multiplayer. The game was set in a futuristic floating city known as The Ark, and players fought each other as members of either the Security or the Resistance. Splash Damage touted the SMART (Smooth Movement Across Random Terrain) System as a way to easily move through the game’s environments.

It’s not clear yet why publisher Bethesda Softworks is now giving away Brink, but with QuakeCon happening later this week, it might just be a nice gesture to fans. We’ve reached out to Bethesda for details.