The EPIC Games Store is planning on being your faithful companion throughout this Christmas season with a number of free games to tide you over. This isn't just a generous move from EPIC Games' heart; customers who enter the storefront to redeem a free game are more likely to purchase other entries than customers who don't even make it through the (metaphorical) entrance. The company will thusly offer 15 free games, one game per day, starting on December 17th. Customers will only have 24 hours to take advantage of the free game offer before it expires. There is no information on which games will actually be free, but the EPIC Games Store has already offered an insanely good amount of, well, insanely good games, so chances are high we're getting something worthwhile. And that is a bonus to the usual game discounts.

In the meantime, two of the aforementioned worthwhile games are now available through to December 17th, where the EPIC Christmas season begins proper. The company is now offering Obsidian Entertainment's Tyranny - Gold Edition - a story-driven RPG where you're destined to become the tirant, not bring him down. This doesn't even qualify as a try to hook gamers into buying available DLC and expansions for the game, as the Gold Edition already offers all additional content that was released to this - in this editor's opinion - excellent game. Not to be content, EPIC is also offering Pillars of Eternity Definitive Edition. You know, another game developed by Obsidian Entertainment, which also merrily includes all additional released content for the game. Say what you will about EPIC - their games store throws us gamers some definite delights.

After the media coverage and customer response to some of the latest games to ship with the current gamers industry parasite of microtransactions or loot crates, it's only fair for media outlets to provide coverage for known companies that might take up that path, but choose not to. There's nothing inherently wrong with microtransactions, per se - it's up to each user to choose whether or not they want to take part in that particular economic bit of gaming. That said, it's just the way of the beast that microtransactions' implementation usually end up affecting progression systems and the ability for players to unlock what would otherwise be behind a paywall - just ask Destiny 2 or Star Wars: Battlefront 2 players. But while microtransactions of some kind may not have anything inherently wrong with them, loot boxes, by their very nature, actually might.

As such, here's some free coverage for Obsidian Entertainment, makers of Alpha Protocol, Fallout: New Vegas, Tyranny, and Pillars of Eternity 2: the company has said in a blog post that users should not, will not, can not expect any kind of microtransactions whatsoever to appear in their upcoming, super secret game, being developed in partnership with publisher Private Division. Obsidian's "emoney" said that "We're extremely excited about our upcoming RPG, and we know you are too. We wish we could tell you all about it right now… but we're going to hold off until the time is right. What we did want to talk about was a question a lot of you have been raising: "Will this upcoming game feature any lootboxes or other microtransactions?" To which he added: The answer is simply: "no." No microtransactions, of any kind, in our game." For me, that's one point more for Obsidian (whose Tyranny was actually amazing, in this editor's humble opinion). Vote with your wallet and all that.