Parents are suing Epic over Fortnite item shop 'FOMO' timers they say are inaccurate and manipulative - Related to war:, 3's, suing, are, they

25 Best Free PC Games To Play In 2025

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Free PC games date back decades, with browser games being all the rage for young kids in the 2000s and well-known titles such as Solitaire, Minesweeper, and SkiFree, among others, coming installed automatically with any copy of Windows.

Thanks to the proliferation of free-to-play games--many which are viable to play long-term without spending a dime--and generous developers who offer up games for free in their entirety, 2025 is home to countless great free games, particularly on PC. There's also a vast library of free titles that harken back to the browser game days and are relatively unknown in the general community.

If you're looking to spend hours experiencing some new games on PC but don't want to fork over any money, we have the list for you. Many great free PC games are on Steam, and we have a separate list of the best free games on Steam for you to peruse. We tried to avoid any overlap here, instead highlighting some lesser-known games, as well as more well-known ones that are only available outside of Steam. For more, check our our picks for the best PC games.

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Parents are suing Epic over Fortnite item shop 'FOMO' timers they say are inaccurate and manipulative

First , two parents in the US are suing Epic Games over limited-time sales of Fortnite skins and cosmetics that they argue aren't really limited time at all, creating a false sense of "FOMO"—a term actually used in the lawsuit—for Fortnite's younger players.

Like many in-game cosmetic storefronts, Fortnite will have daily or otherwise limited-time sales with live timers counting down the life of the discount.

The lawsuit alleges that, in many cases, these items "remained available for purchase, often at the same purportedly discounted rate, for many days or even weeks at a time."

"Numerous courts have found that fake countdown timers like Epic’s run afoul of these and similar prohibitions."

The lawsuit cites a €1,125,000 ($1,200,000) fine issued to Epic by the Netherlands over this very issue last year. The Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) found that many items with 24-hour countdowns displayed on their listings actually remained at the same price for periods of time well in excess of those 24-hour periods.

Epic, for its part, is attempting to appeal the ACM's decision, and offered the following statement about the new lawsuit:

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"This complaint contains factual errors and does not reflect how Fortnite operates. Last year we removed the countdown timer in the Item Shop and we offer protections against unwanted purchases.

"This includes a hold-to-purchase mechanic, instant purchase cancellations, self service returns for shop purchases and an explicit yes/no choice to save payment information.

"When a player creates an Epic account and indicates they are under 13, they are unable to make real money purchases until a parent provides consent. Once they do, we offer industry leading parental controls including PIN protecting purchases. We will fight these asserts."

The plaintiffs are suing Epic in a San Francisco court, and the next step is for the judge to determine whether or not to allow it to become a class action, broadening the suit to potentially include a large portion of Fortnite's player base.

We're starting to see more lawsuits brought against big developers over in-game purchases, as well as stewards of major digital storefronts, most notably the antitrust lawsuit against Valve over Steam, which was upgraded to a class action last year.

At the same time, fending off a class action can sometimes be preferable to "arbitration overload," an unintended side-effect of the (usually corporate-favoring, consumer-unfriendly) forced arbitration clauses endemic to tech EULAs. Valve itself removed its own arbitration clause in the Steam EULA last year, though this was likely primarily due to it having been ruled "unenforceable."

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Total War: Warhammer 3's rework of the Kislev faction looks promising, as do Cathay's grenadiers

Playing Total War: Warhammer 3's Kislev campaign on release was one of the best storified strategy game times I've had in years, launch issues be thrice-damned, triple cooked, and three times a lady. But the Slavic bulwark against stinky, angry, tricksy and horny invaders has lost some lustre since. The details in Creative Assembly's latest blog are still a work in progress, but give a solid idea of how Kislev as a faction are changing in a patch due mid-March.

Creative Assembly mentioned a while back that they'd be tweaking the pricing structure for the Shadows Of Change DLC to bring it in line with the a la carte factions from other recent expansions. The Kislev-Cathay-Tzeentch expansion was beefed up post-release with new units, and now it's getting some more love: joining Kislev, Now It's Ursunal are toys for Kairos Fateweaver, and surprise new units for Cathay and the Ogre Kingdoms.

The biggest news here is that they've axed the supporter race between Katarin and Assputin completely. You'll instead "curry favour with the Orthodoxy to improve your common line troops, strengthen your economy and improve your invocations. And support the Ice court in order to improve your elite infantry, spellcasting and hero usage."

This isn't a race, but there'll apparently be consequences ("unrest") if you focus too much on one side over the other. I'm torn over this. I'm up for regular buffs and army theming all day long, but it sounds like there's already a single correct way to play baked in to the system, with perhaps just a little leeway to make choices if you don't want to suffer penalties. I'd say I'd withhold judgement but the judgement has clearly already wriggled out from my grasp and made itself known, in print no less.

Also dead is the ubiquitous province control system, replaced with an updated version of Devotion. "It acts much like Control, but can be spent on local invocations to temporarily boost the local province, or to empower an army temporarily".

The tech tree is getting an overhaul ("no longer locked behind owning the Kislev capitals"!) as is the Attamans system. They're getting their own unique skill trees, plus the following:

"Atamans now enable a new feature for settlements, tentatively called “Garrison Sally Attack” where you can command settlements managed by them to engage enemies within a limited distance, as if the settlements themselves were armies. Of course, the capital of the province is lead by the Ataman himself, who takes the field with the garrison during this attack."

This is exciting because it a) just sounds very useful and b) opens up the possibility of Wood Elf tree settlements being able to uproot themselves and branch batter invaders somewhere down the line.

For fate-weaving failbird Kairos, there's a whole pick n' mix lore system:

"The core promise of the fragments of sorcery feature was versatility to build your own composite lore. And the design quickly narrowed in on a true “any combination you want” feature that completely did away with the idea of an ancillary slot, and moved the decision making to its own tab of the character detail panel."

Do pop over to the blog for some more detailed visuals, but it basically looks like you'll be able to slot in what spells you want and switch between heads to access more than usual. It's a touch vague at the moment though.

Finally, there are two new units: grenadiers for Cathay and Gnoblar slingers for the Ogre Kingdoms. The grenadiers are vulnerable but powerful bomb hurlers with a debuff stun grenade, and the slingers look like Skavenslave slingers but less perfect, beautiful, graceful, and valiant.

I do enjoy all the work in progress art for its transparency in revealing that videogames look mostly awful for 95% of their development. I once played a grey box version of a game where all the characters in cutscenes had their faces replaced by real time clips of the actors doing mocap. Deeply disconcerting stuff.

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