Cardpocalypse and an Albion Online bundle free on the Epic Games Store until 27 August

The Epic Games Store has refreshed its weekly giveaway, and this week's haul offers PC players two very different freebies: Cardpocalypse, a single-player deck-building adventure, and the Epic Mage Bundle for the free-to-play MMORPG Albion Online. Both are free to claim until 27 August.

The weekly giveaway remains one of the most reliable rituals in PC gaming. Epic rotates its free titles every Thursday, and anyone with a free Epic account — two-factor authentication enabled — can claim the week's games and keep them permanently.

At a glance

• Cardpocalypse Standard Edition is free on the Epic Games Store from 20 to 27 August
• The Epic Mage Bundle for Albion Online, a cosmetic DLC pack, is free over the same window
• Claimed games are kept permanently; a free Epic account with two-factor authentication is required
• Freebies rotate every Thursday
• Next week's titles are already confirmed: Breathedge and Rival Stars Horse Racing: Desktop Edition

What you get this week

Cardpocalypse is the headline act: a single-player deck-builder in which players collect cards, customise them, and battle mutant creatures through a choice-driven story. It is a game built around bending rules — cards can be permanently altered with stickers, and decisions in the narrative feed back into the deck itself, which sets it apart from the more mechanical end of the card-game genre.

The second freebie is a bonus for an existing free game rather than a standalone title. The Epic Mage Bundle for Albion Online packs cosmetic items and weapon skins for the medieval fantasy MMORPG, which is itself free to play — so the bundle costs nothing on top of a game that already costs nothing.

How the giveaway works

Epic's system is deliberately frictionless: log in, open the store page, and click claim before the Thursday rotation. Once a game is claimed it stays in the account library permanently, exactly as if it had been bought. The only requirement beyond an account is enabling two-factor authentication, a rule Epic introduced to stop bots hoovering up giveaways.

The giveaway programme has been running since 2018 and has handed out hundreds of titles, from indie experiments to blockbusters. For Epic it is a customer-acquisition engine for its storefront war with Steam; for players it is simply a weekly habit worth keeping.

Next week is already confirmed

Epic has also shown its hand for the following rotation. From 27 August the store will give away Breathedge, a darkly comic space-survival game about a man and his immortal chicken adrift in a debris field, alongside Rival Stars Horse Racing: Desktop Edition, a horse breeding and racing simulation.

Confirming titles a week ahead has become standard practice for Epic, and it changes how players treat the store — checking back weekly rather than stumbling across giveaways by accident.

What happens next

This week's pair can be claimed until 10am UK time on Thursday 27 August, when Breathedge and Rival Stars Horse Racing take their place. Anyone tempted by Cardpocalypse or playing Albion Online should claim before the switchover — once a week's games rotate out, Epic rarely brings them back quickly.