Steam Lists a $4.99 Dying Light DLC as Free to Keep

SteamDB has queued Dying Light: The Beast’s $4.99 Discharge Weapon Pack as a September 2026 Free to Keep giveaway. The listing names no day, and queued packages do not always go live.

The pack is a machete and a charm. It is useless without the base game, which Steam already has on a 50% anniversary sale through September 26.

SteamDB Lists a $4.99 Machete Pack for September

SteamDB’s upcoming free promotions calendar now carries the Discharge Weapon Pack under September 2026. The tracker is explicit that these packages may never appear on the store. Techland has not posted a start time on the game’s Steam page.

The same page already has live offers. Crystal Crisis is Free to Keep from 07:00 UTC on September 14, 2026, to 06:59 UTC on September 22, 2026. That puzzle game never sat in the upcoming list first. It flipped to 100% off overnight.

September’s queued Beast pack is the only Techland item in the next two months of that list. October is a different publisher’s launch window, plus one extra package with no public store page attached.

QUEUED FREE TO KEEP PACKAGES

SteamDB files those October rows as sub 1782945, 1782949, 1782986, and 1825454. The Beast pack is sub 1823003. None of those IDs is a live claim button.

The Pack Is a Machete You Still Have to Unlock

Techland shipped the Discharge Weapon Pack on March 26, 2026, at $4.99. Store copy on Xbox describes an electrifying machete salvaged from Harran, with a charged blade. The listing is short on purpose.

WHAT THE $4.99 PACK CONTAINS

• Discharge Machete: A melee weapon sold as a charged blade for killing Infected.
• VNC Weapon Charm: A cosmetic charm that hangs off a weapon.
• Base game required: The DLC will not launch without Dying Light: The Beast.

Xbox and PlayStation pages both list the Discharge Machete and VNC Weapon Charm and nothing else. There is no map, no quest, and no extra mode in that SKU.

The Beast itself launched on September 18, 2025, at $59.99. Techland built it as a standalone game after it outgrew a Dying Light 2 expansion. Steam marks it Deck Verified, with 42 achievements and co-op for up to three other players. The store page still sells 11 add-ons around it.

A Free to Keep grant would put the pack in a Steam library for good, the same way a paid copy does. It would not hand anyone the $59.99 game.

Valve Already Told Publishers These Giveaways Rarely Convert

Free to Keep is a publisher request, not a Valve weekly drop. Steamworks says the feature is not self-service. A studio has to contact the Steam Team at least a month ahead, and Valve can refuse the slot if the game is a poor fit.

The partner page is blunt about what the promo actually does. It is a time-limited 100% discount that writes a permanent license to an account. It is not Free to Play, and it is not a Free Weekend. Valve also tells partners that the tool is a bad way to lift concurrent players.

The majority of customers who grab a free license during a Free to Keep will never play the game, and it also eliminates those customers from being able to purchase the game in the future.

Steamworks documentation, Valve

Those notes add three more catches. Reviews from a free license do not count toward the review score. Trading cards do not drop. And most claimants never play the game in Valve’s own sampling.

The same document says Free to Keeps are not promoted anywhere on the Store besides the product page. Wishlist owners are not pinged. There is no dedicated shelf of current giveaways. Valve’s suggested alternative is a deep discount, which does notify wishlists and can land on Specials lists.

A Free to Keep must run at least 24 hours so every time zone can claim it. Valve tells partners to keep the window under two weeks. Longer than that, the page says, and the product may belong in Free to Play instead.

The Beast Is 50% Off Through September 26

Techland is already running the discount Valve prefers. On September 14, 2026, the studio posted an Anniversary Steam Sale for The Beast, almost a year after launch. The live store page still labels it a weekend deal that ends September 26.

THE BEAST ON SALE

• Standard edition: $59.99 cut to $29.99, 50% off through September 26.
• Deluxe edition: $69.99 cut to $34.99, also 50% off.
• RL Definitive Edition: $89.99 cut to $44.99, and that bundle already includes the Discharge pack.
• Sister weapon pack: Fire Lotus is $3.99 at 20% off, while Discharge stays at $4.99 full price.

Action Hero Essentials and Hunter Essentials are $7.99 each, down from $9.99. The RL Definitive Upgrade is $17.99, down from $29.99. Discharge is the cheap weapon pack Techland did not put on sale.

If the Free to Keep slot goes live before September 26, anyone who already owns the standard game can claim a $4.99 add-on during the same window the base game is $29.99. Anyone who buys the Definitive Edition at $44.99 already has that machete in the bundle and does not need the giveaway.

Recent Steam reviews sit at Mostly Positive, 79% of 625 in the last 30 days. English reviews are still Very Positive, 87% of 26,541. That is a year-old $60 game on a half-off sticker, with leftover DLC waiting for a free button Valve will not advertise.

October’s Free Slots Sit on Unreleased Nacon Games

Three of the four dated October packages on SteamDB belong to Nacon. All three sit on games that have not shipped on Steam yet. The giveaways are cosmetics and extras, not the full titles.

MXGP 26 launches October 1 at $59.99. Artefacts Studio developed it. Nacon is publishing. Xbox pre-order copy promises six exclusive SCRUB Designz liveries with the standard edition. SteamDB’s October row is that livery pack, not the motocross game.

Gear.Club Unlimited 3 is due October 8, from Eden Games and Nacon. The Signature Pack unlocks two liveries, the Honda S2000 GCU3 Edition and the BMW Z4 GCU Edition. PlayStation pre-order copy already bundles that pack with the base game. SteamDB has it as a separate October Free to Keep line.

Hunting Simulator 3 is due October 29 from Nacon Studio Ghent. SteamDB lists a Classic American Hunter Pack for the same month. Nacon has not published a public contents sheet for that pack on the Steam store page, which still has no user reviews because the game is not out.

Fireside Feelings is the fifth October line. SteamDB gives it no publisher and no tied-to game on the upcoming list. It is as unguaranteed as the rest.

A player who wants those October gifts still has to own, or buy, MXGP 26, Gear.Club Unlimited 3, or Hunting Simulator 3 when each pack goes live. The free slot is a launch extra, not a substitute for a $60 race game.

Why the Pack Does Nothing Without the Base Game

Steam’s Free to Keep mechanic is simple once the package is live. A free package replaces the paid one on the product page for a set number of hours. A callout shows the time left. After the window, the free package disappears and the paid SKU returns.

For a full game, that means a permanent library license. For DLC, it means a license to content that still needs the parent app. Dying Light: The Beast is app 3008130. The Discharge pack is app 4355480. Claiming 4355480 without 3008130 leaves a charm and a machete with nowhere to go.

HOW A CLAIM WORKS

• Find the product page: The free package appears on the DLC page, not on a Steam-wide free shelf.
• Add it before expiry: Valve requires at least 24 hours. Many of these deals last a few days.
• Keep it after the sale: The license stays on the account like a purchase.
• Do not expect cards: Free to Keep licenses do not drop trading cards.

SteamDB is the public calendar because Valve does not keep one. Discord channels around that tracker ping when a package flips. People who wait for an official Steam email will not get one. Wishlist pings do not fire on these deals.

Confirmed Listings Still Fall Off SteamDB

SteamDB prints a warning above the upcoming list: the packages may become available, but they are not guaranteed. Publishers stage a free package, then drop the plan, and the row vanishes. The tracker says that is uncommon, and that it does happen.

Crystal Crisis is the other failure mode. It never appeared as a dated upcoming row and then went free from September 14 to September 22. Anyone watching only the queued list would have missed it until the store page changed.

WHAT WE KNOW

• September queue: SteamDB lists the Discharge Weapon Pack as Free to Keep in September 2026, still $4.99 on the paid SKU.
• Sale overlap: The Beast is $29.99 through September 26, and Definitive already contains the pack.
• October queue: Three Nacon DLC rows plus Fireside Feelings sit on the same tracker, all marked unguaranteed.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The day: No start hour is public for the Beast pack.
• The window: Valve’s floor is 24 hours and its advice is under two weeks, but Techland has not named a duration.
• October: Any of those four rows can still be pulled before a store button appears.

The Discharge pack still costs $4.99 on Steam. The free package has not replaced it. Until that swap happens, the September listing is a row on a tracker, not a machete in a library.