*** This offer is now over ***
Today Rebellion and Steam have teamed up to make Sniper Elite V2 completely FREE to download on Steam – but ONLY for 24 hours – it ends Thursday June 5th at 10am PST and 6pm BST.
Download on Steam for FREE now >>
Even if you already own the game, please share the news with all your friends and let’s get those multiplayer servers filled with fresh blood and the beautiful sounds of rifle fire!
Of course giving away our best ever game for free is a little nerve-wracking – here’s a few answers to some of the questions we know you’ll be asking us!
Why are you giving it away for FREE?
V2 is one of Rebellion’s most successful ever games, but it’s been out for over two years now. And while it exceeded all sales expectations, it’s still got a lot of room to grow.
One of the most common things we hear from new players is that Sniper Elite V2 is not quite what they expected – it’s got more stealth and tactical elements than they ever realised. Basically – it’s far removed from the simple shooting gallery that a name like Sniper Elite might indicate!
With Sniper Elite 3 so close to launch we wanted to build buzz around the franchise again, and in particular, get the series into the hands of new players who might go on to become lifetime fans.
As Jason, our Creative Director puts it:
“In the end independent studios like Rebellion know that players are more important than money. If you can delight them and build that word of mouth, that buzz about your game – it’s worth everything. We want people to interact with our studio and our games for years, not just launch week.”
But what about fans who PAID for V2? What do they get?
Firstly we hope that a burst of new players will really liven up the multiplayer scene around V2 – especially now that there is so much added DLC content included that wasn’t there at launch, and hopefully this will provide a lot of fun for core sniper fans who’ve had to wait patiently for MP games and co-op missions over the past months.
However we aren’t going to be providing any new content, and this is mainly because the idea was only discussed with Steam very recently, so there was no time to work on anything else for V2 – especially with Sniper Elite 3 so close to launch.
We have all kinds of Sniper Elite players – the original pre-orderers, the launch buyers, the Steam sales buyers, retail buyers the gifter … the list goes on and on!
Sadly we can’t be fair to everyone, and we don’t have the ability to give different bits of content to people depending on how much they paid! This is simply not possible via Steam.
We honestly hope fans don’t feel cheated because it was never our intention, and we decided that it was right we should warn players on Monday that they shouldn’t buy V2 on Steam this week – which was reported by lots of gaming websites, and posted on our social media.
Of course if you have any concerns or questions, email marketing@rebellion.co.uk
Why aren’t the 360 and PS3 versions free as well?
As you probably know, 505 Games are the publisher of Sniper Elite V2 on consoles so it is up to them to run these kinds of promotions for console players – we have no say on that.
Furthermore we’re not even sure Microsoft and Sony have the ability to run such promotions on the ‘old’ consoles. That’s discounting retail too, who definitely can’t make the boxed games free.
So overall, it’s not something that was ever viable.
So will you do this for all your games?
Being honest – we don’t know, but probably not. It was never part of our original plans and we have no idea how this will turn out! If we want to be sustainable it’s up to us to experiment with our games and how we keep the studio financially viable.
We hope you’ll continue to follow and support Rebellion.
Wish us luck!
Rebellion