Sid Meier is a familiar name in video games as he has created great video games since the eighties. Best known for Civilization series, he took the concept beyond the world as we know it into space with Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth. To this writing, Civilization: Beyond Earth will be free to play over this weekend, and this offer arrives as the Rising Tide expansion has been given its official release date.
According to Game Reactor, Steam is having a promotion over this weekend that allows users to download the full version of Civilization: Beyond Earth for free and play without any limitation until August 17th. If you find that you are enjoying the game and want to continue playing after that, it is possible to buy Civilization: Beyond Earth for 50 percent off its usual price.
The reason for this giveaway is related to the Rising Tide expansion scheduled for release on October 9th, and users can pre-order the this expansion with a 10 percent discount. Rising Tide is an expansion pack that highlights aquatic gameplay and will have a new rewritten diplomacy system, water tiles, and multiple new factions. VG 24/7 reports that users can purchase the base game, a pre-order for the expansion, and the Exoplanets add-on in a bundle at 17 percent off the regular price.
If you are not familiar with Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth, it is a turn-based strategy in the Civilization Series developed by Firaxis Games and published by 2K Games. It is essentially a spiritual successor to Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, and they have the same development team. Civilization: Beyond Earth takes place in the far future as humanity has travelled through space and found colonies on other worlds after the Earth becomes uninhabitable due to some disaster that is only known as "The Great Mistake".
If you are not familiar with Sid Meier, he had done a lot of strategy and simulation video games throughout the decades. His name often appears on several of his games, which was actually a suggestion from the one-and-only Robin Williams back in the eighties. The first was Sid Meier's Pirates, and then the Railroad Tycoon, the entire Civilization series, and much more. The Civilization series allows the player to build their own pre-historical civilization and essentially become a great leader of history.
There is a similar game to Civilization: Beyond Earth known as Sid Meier's Starships that builds upon the narrative of Civilization: Beyond Earth. It features a space fleet-based exploration of a larger galaxy.
It's pretty clear that Firaxis Games wants to give its users a free ticket to the stars over the weekend in order to get players hooked on Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth and even purchase that expansion pack of Rising Tide. Let's see how it goes.
