Vermintide 2’s zombie free-for-all is free, for all, on Steam right now

If you haven’t picked up Warhammer: Vermintide 2 yet, this weekend would be a really good time. Fatshark’s cooperative, melee-focused take on PvE horde-slaughtering (think: Left 4 Dead) is free on Steam, to both download and keep, through Monday, Nov. 7.

Then, on Tuesday, Nov. 8, everyone who has the game gets the free Trail of Treachery update, for which Fatshark pumped out a launch trailer on Thursday. “A Trail of Treachery” gives players a new map and a new adventure for the four-year old game.

This is all part of a monthlong promotion running up to the Nov. 30 release of Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, which is that canon’s adaptation of the same concept: blaze away at the infected horde, with weapons, heroes, and settings drawn from the Warhammer 40,000 universe. We went hands-on with a preview of Darktide last month; you can get a look for yourself when Darktide’s beta kicks off — for pre-order customers, of course — on Nov. 17.

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 first launched in March 2018 on Windows PC, joining Xbox One and PlayStation 4 later that year. An Xbox Series X version launched in December 2020. It was a breakout hit, well beyond its predecessor, 2015’s Warhammer: The End Times — Vermintide; we took another look at Vermintide 2 earlier this year and found a game that has now surpassed any comparison to Left 4 Dead, and is worthy of a Polygon Recommends endorsement.