Death Stranding is free on the Epic Games Store right now

Update: After Epic's servers took the kind of beating last seen when it gave away Grand Theft Auto 5, the site has come back online. Only now, the Christmas giveaway is for the base edition of Death Stranding rather than the director's cut. 

Original story: Santa has a name, and it's Sam Porter Bridges.

For a couple weeks every December Epic gives away a new free game on the Epic Game Store every single day. This year has already included some great gets, including the classic Fallout games and the Christmas Eve gift of Metro: Last Light Redux. But wow, Christmas day is delivering big: Epic Rolled out Death Stranding: Director's Cut for free on December 25.

We're Strand Game Appreciators here at PC Gamer. Death Stranding was our 2020 GOTY, and we appreciated all the extra stuff the Director's Cut added to an already great game. It only released on PC this year, making this a very fresh giveaway for Epic, even if the base game is now somehow a whole three years old.

Earlier this year we reflected on how the pandemic affected our experience with Death Stranding. Now we know a sequel's on the way, which will hopefully star more incredibly named characters.

The Epic Games Store seems to be straining under the load of the Death Stranding Director's Cut giveaway, but it's still online as of this writing. If you have trouble getting the store to load, give it a few minutes and try again. You've got a whole day to grab Death Stranding before it's back to its usual $40 price. If you happen to own the base game on Steam already, the Director's Cut upgrade is currently part of the Steam sale, and will only cost you $6.