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This entry is trivia, which is cool and all, but not a trope. On a work, it goes on the Trivia tab.

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Rereleased for Free

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When the rights are expiring, you might as well.
Sometimes, the people who own the copyright for a certain commercial product decide to re-release said product to the general audience as a free product.

Reasons for doing so vary. Sometimes, the product is not doing well, and the people who own the rights don't want the product's community to die out and/or want to keep the product from falling into Keep Circulating the Tapes. Other times, it's being given out as a celebration of some event.

A variation is when the product is only released for a certain amount of time before it stops being commercial.

Another variation is when something becomes free only for a limited amount of time before it stops being free.

May result in said product becoming either an Allegedly Free Game or Freemium. Compare Abandonware and Free/Libre Open Source Software. Contrast Shareware.

Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 

    Asian Animation 
  • Happy Heroes: The official YouTube channel has uploaded Seasons 1-6, Seasons 10-15, and the second movie for free viewing. As of 2020-2021, the Season 10-12 episodes were unfortunately region-blocked outside of China and the playlist containing the episodes were removed (as of this day).
  • Indian series Lamput was originally on the pay channel Cartoon Network before it was officially uploaded for free on YouTube.
  • Motu Patlu, which airs on Nickelodeon India, has all of its episodes uploaded to series producer Cosmos-Maya's official YouTube channel, Wow Kidz. The spin-off Inspector Chingum, which originally premiered on Prime Video India, also got released on the Wow Kidz YouTube channel.
  • Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Quite a few movies/shows originally costed money to watch before they were put up for free on Youku, iQiyi, and other sites. However, this didn't last because they eventually made you pay to watch some seasons.
    • Outside of China, some seasons were available in YouTube for free, and also includes the Bowdlerized version of Great War in the Bizzare World season and episode 341-380. At least, but except the Smart Dodging season episode 34.
    • When the season Dunk for Victories were put on iQiyi, originally the episodes beyond episode 6 were restricted to VIP access, but this was later reversed and the entire season became free to watch for a while. But due to even the factor of dwelling popularity of the season, later the VIP restriction was put up again as Creative Power Entertaining's strategy to Win Back the Crowd and just to earn more money.

    Comic Books 

    Computer Software 
  • GiveAwayOfTheDay.com gives free software for one day only; after that it goes back to its regular price.
  • macOS X version 10.9, known as Mavericks, became free, whereas previously new versions were paid. You have to have a Mac (or a Hackintosh) to take advantage of this, but still, it's now free and previously was not.
    • Same with Microsoft Windows. Windows 7 and 8 owners, even if their copy is pirated, could get Windows 10 for free on launch... but they had to upgrade within a year of its release. Except it is actually more complicated than Microsoft initially stated. You can download and install an ISO of Windows 10 for free, but to take advantage of features like customization, you'll have to activate it.

    Films — Animation 

    Films — Live Action 

    Film Studios 

    Literature 
  • Project Gutenberg is a volunteer-based organization with the mission of promoting eBooks. People are encouraged to create eBooks of any works that have fallen within the public domain for their country. This allows them to distribute "every" book for free (where "every" means books that are no longer protected by copyright).
  • American Girl has rereleased a number of books for free online. During the start of the COVID-19 Pandemic, a variety of older and current books were offered for free digitally for twelve weeks. During their diversity and inclusion promotion in 2020, they also offered every current book with a black protagonist for free. This includes the Cécile and Marie-Grace series (who were retired in 2014), the full series of Addy books (including the short story collection, mystery, and the main series in the individual six-book series which had been depreciated), two books in the side series for Misty Copeland and Rosa Parks, and the entire Gabriela series. Other older books are offered in full text through their online library; this includes books for retired characters from the Historical Characters and the Girls of the Year. It doesn't however, include older lines that have been completely discontinued such as for the Girls of Many Lands or History Mysteries.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Carsey-Werner Television has licensed most of their shows to FilmRise for free streaming on the Tubi TV website.
  • All of Father Ted has been uploaded to YouTube onto the Dead Parrot channel.
  • The entire run of The Red Green Show has been uploaded for free onto the show's official YouTube channel.
  • Every episode of The Joy of Painting is available for free on the official Bob Ross YouTube channel.
  • All episodes of the faith-based children's series May Bukas Pa are available for free streaming on ABS-CBN Entertainment's YouTube channel. This is also the same on some of the network's past television shows, such as 100 Days to Heaven, Ikaw ay Pag-ibig, Honesto, Nathaniel, and many more.
  • Run with Us Productions has uploaded much of RoboCop: The Series onto their official YouTube channel.
  • With the exception of The Kids of Degrassi Street and the Netflix-produced Next Class episodes, three of the Degrassi series - Degrassi Junior High, Degrassi High (only the first season for an inexplicable reason), and Degrassi: The Next Generation - were officially made available on YouTube by DHX Media (now WildBrain) in the late 2010s. Both Degrassi High and Next Generation have made it onto Tubi in the United States at certain points, and Next Generation has its own Pluto TV channel. However, in 2022, the three series on YouTube were geoblocked in the US and other Western countries.
  • Sherlock: Starting on April 1, 2022, all four seasons of the series are officially available to view on Crackle.
  • The nostalgia TV station That's TV now has the rights to screen a varied selection of British TV from The '70s and The '80s on Freeview. These can be shows that fell out of favour with their makers at ITV or the BBC, such as The Goodiesnote  or The Benny Hill Shownote . That's TV also gets to screen shows which the BBC currently isn't choosing to monetise on its paid-for subscription channel Brit Box, such as Till Death Us Do Partnote .
  • Sesame Street has a number of full episodes on their official YouTube channel. They initially consisted of solely episodes from the 2000s, with the exception of one 1993 episode. Since 2022, a number of episodes from more recent seasons have been uploaded.
  • Following the lead of their sister networks, Disney Channel has uploaded the complete first seasons of Wizards of Waverly Place and Stuck in the Middle to their YouTube channel.
  • In 2023, every episode of The Big Comfy Couch was uploaded to YouTube for free. Before this, the After School Cartoons channel on Pluto TV showed the series.
  • Since 2023, the entire Baby Einstein back catalog can be viewed on YouTube.

    Music 
  • Anathallo's first album, Luminous Luminescence in the Atlas Position, was out of print and completely impossible to buy for a period in the early 2000s. During this time, the band members would give MP3s of the album to any fan who asked them online.
  • Havalina Rail Co.'s album Russian Lullabies went out of print, and the record label that published it went out of business. When fans clamored for a way to get the album, the band responded by putting it on their website as a free download.
  • This trope is the whole point of the Radiohead Public Library, an official online archive of Radiohead's material that allows fans to access almost all of their works, both old and new, for no monetary payment. The stuff included on the site includes studio and live recordings going all the way back to the Drill EP in 1992, concert videos, music videos (including all of the Kid A blips in 720p), older versions of the band's website, liner notes, promotional flyers, and even the 1998 rockumentary Meeting People is Easy in its entirety.
  • For a given definition of "free," this has become the standard for most major musicians nowadays, with their old backlogs being re-released on freely available streaming services such as Pandora, Spotify, and YouTube; while these services do require users to listen to advertisements every now and then to maintain revenue for both the artists and platforms, nobody has to actually buy copies of these old albums and singles anymore. Of course, there's still the risk of these uploads being taken down either by the artists' own volition or due to legal issues, but for the time they're still up no direct payment is required to access them.
  • In August 2020, Touhou Fan Music circle FELT started gradually uploading its old albums to YouTube.
  • But whatever you do, don't download "Weird Al" Yankovic's "Don't Download This Song", even though he put it up on the internet for free. Even Lars Ulrich knows it's wrong.

    Tabletop Games 
  • In August 2009, a Universal System called the D6 system was rereleased as open source under the SRD. PDF versions of a couple of books (including the base rules) were then released to the general audience for free.

    Video Games 
  • The Vietnamese FPS 7554 was re-released for free on the anniversary of one of the battles depicted in-game.
  • Discord initially locked their Activities series to Nitro subscribers, then released all those games for free forever.
  • Electronic Arts:
    • The company has offered many games through its Digital Distribution platform, Origin, via the "On The House" program. The service has offered many games (both classic and modern) to download and play permanently for free if they're registered within a certain (unspecified) amount of time. Titles in the promotion included (among others) Dead Space, Battlefield 3, Dragon Age: Origins, Need for Speed: Most Wanted and more.
    • The first Command & Conquer: Red Alert was released for free as a limited-time promotion when EA released the third title in the series.
    • When Origin removed The Sims 2 from it's store shelves on July 15, 2014, existing owners were given a email saying that their copy of The Sims 2 had been upgraded to The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection, containing all expansion packs and stuff packs, even if the owner hadn't obtained them yet. Later that month, Ultimate Collection could be obtained for free by inputting in a promo code. After the promotion ended, it was still possible to obtain The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection by showing proof of owning a physical copy of The Sims 2 through EA chat. This was discontinued by late 2018, making them no longer obtainable in legal form.
    • The Sims 4 was given away for free on Origin during a franchise sale in 2018. 4 years later, EA announced that the base game itself would be free-to-play starting on October 18, 2022.
  • GOG.com have numerous examples of this, due to offering many limited-time giveaways of free games and a permanent "package" of free games that can be downloaded and enjoyed just for opening an account. There's even a community-made list of all the games that have been offered over the history of the service:
    • Beta testers who took part in the GOG Galaxy early tests (simply signing up for the service) received a copy of the 1999 Alien vs. Predator for free to test it with.
    • Beneath a Steel Sky was also released for free.
    • Dungeon Keeper Gold was given away free to all users in mid-February 2014.
    • Due to their rights to the classic Fallout games lapsing, GOG offered Fallout, Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics to all users shortly before they removed the games in late 2013 (although the rights were re-acquired a year later and the games were put back up — and priced accordingly).
    • Users who took part in GOG surveys and system tests on two occasions in 2012 could obtain the entire Realms of Arkania trilogy for free.
    • Flight of the Amazon Queen was released for free as well.
    • Players who had a GOG Connect account and used it to access the service in early June 2016 could download a copy of System Shock 2 to keep permanently.
    • Tyrian, originally published in 1995, was re-released as freeware in 2004 as a gift to everyone else. It can also be found on GOG as a freeware product.
    • A few of the Ultima games were released for free, including Ultima 0 (a.k.a. Akalabeth: World of Doom), Ultima IV, Worlds of Ultima: The Savage Empire and its sequel, Worlds of Adventure 2: Martian Dreams. All of these can be found on GOG.
    • The Jill of the Jungle trilogy is available for free. (its sibling game Xargon is also free elsewhere)
  • Valve Software have given several of their internally-developed games away for free as part of limited-time promotions or seasonal events, as well as select games from other publishers. These deals are usually offered for a 24-hour period on Steam, and anyone who clicks "Download" on the store page keeps the games permanently.
    • Amnesia: The Dark Descent was given out free in September 2015.
    • The original Killing Floor was distributed for free in 2011.
    • Left 4 Dead 2 was given away for free during the 2013 Steam Holiday Sale.
    • Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee was distributed freely for a 24-hour period in August 2015.
    • Portal was made free for two weeks in May 2010 to promote Steam on Mac, and for a few days in September 2011 to promote the "Learn with Portals" initiative.
    • In late August 2016, Shadow Warrior (1997) was distributed for free in order to promote the release of Shadow Warrior 2. This original version of the game was redubbed as Shadow Warrior Classic and remained a freebie while the Devolver Digital Classic Redux remaster was sold in its stead. Other stores like GOG.com (which also has Classic Redux) and ZOOM followed this trend. The only exception is 3D Realms' official rebuild, known as Shadow Warrior (Classic) (note the parenthesis on Classic) on Steam.
    • In late 2014, Sniper Elite V2 was offered for free for 24 hours, largely to promote the upcoming release of Sniper Elite III.
    • Team Fortress 2 was originally a paid game (notably as part of the retail bundle The Orange Box, which included several other Valve titles), but eventually transitioned to a freemium model supported by Loot Box in 2011. According to Valve's own metrics, moving to a free-to-play model (and giving players the ability to create custom weapons, cosmetic items and hats) increased their revenue by a factor of twelve.
    • In September 2018, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive was made free like Team Fortress above, after several months of being free only to play offline and spectate matches. The catch? Servers are now segregated between "Free" and "Prime" (paid) players, and the cost of Prime Access is twice the base price of the game when it was paid.
    • In May 2018, both Steam and the above GOG.com gave away the original Unreal over a 48-hour period to celebrate the Unreal series' 20th anniversary.
    • Brink! was permanently made free on August 2017, Steam version only, without being Freemium, although the DLC which features several new maps and features, still for sale with a price tag.
    • Over the course of the COVID Pandemic, quite a number of games were offered for free on Steam to entice users to play more video games at home instead of going outside. To name a few: Drawful 2, 100% Orange Juice!, Tomb Raider (2013), Pac-Man Championship Edition 2, Total War: Shogun 2, The LEGO Ninjago Movie Video Game, the first chapter of Higurashi: When They Cry...
  • Likewise, Ubisoft offered games for free on Uplay for a limited time for people stuck at home due to the COVID pandemic, including Assassin's Creed II, Rayman Legends, and Child of Light.
  • Like other online multiplayer games, Age of Conan was re-released for free after its creators discovered the miracle of microtransactions.
  • The original SimCity has been re-released under an open-source licence as "Micropolis".
  • Championship Manager 01/02 was made freeware in December 2008, and partly as a result, it remains arguably the most popular instalment in the franchise despite being twenty years old.
  • Elite:
    • Both the original game and its sequel, Frontier, were re-released as free downloads from Frontier Developments, though some wrangling is needed to get them to run on modern machines.
    • The standalone version of Elite Dangerous' multiplayer mode, Arena, was offered for free by Steam in mid-2016.
    • Elite Dangerous itself would become available for free for one week on Epic's storefront to promote the launch of it's first DLC, Odyssey, in November 2020.
  • An Untitled Story and its soundtrack were originally sold for money before Matt released them as freeware.
  • The Elder Scrolls: Arena and Daggerfall have been released as freeware. Arena on the 10th anniversary of its original release and Daggerfall on the series' 15th anniversary.
  • Grand Theft Auto series:
    • Grand Theft Auto and its sequel were commercially released games. The Windows ports of the first two games were re-released as freeware to encourage people to sign up for the Rockstar Propaganda newsletter and on Steam. Unfortunately, there were delisted on Steam for reasons unknown, although they were made downloadable from Rockstar's own website soon after.
    • Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was re-released on PC for free for a limited time to promote Rockstar's own gaming platform/launcher around mid-September 2019.
  • PlayStation Plus members get free games that usually have been around for a year or even more than ten years before. Oftentimes the new run breathes life into the online scene. Some larger games that have been offered free include Borderlands 2 and LittleBigPlanet 2.
  • In 1999, Epic Games rereleased their classic fighter One Must Fall 2097 as freeware as well.
    • In 2009, they released UDK (Unreal Development Kit); an open-source version of Unreal Engine 3 for Windows (and later, iOS) platforms. Although anyone selling a UDK-based game still has to pay Epic royaltiesnote , releasing free UDK based games is... free.
    • Epic then launched their own storefront to compete with Steam in 2019. They would give away up to two games weekly (and very rarely, three games). And while usually it would be indie titles up for grabs, Triple-A titles like Grand Theft Auto V and Surviving Mars have come up for grabs in the past.
  • In 2004, the former members of Warzone 2100's defunct developer, Pumpkin Studios, released the game and its source code under the GNU General Public License.
  • The original The Suffering was eventually released for free, with ads embedded.
  • Likewise, Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy, also by Midway, was released for free under the same program.
  • The 2005 Area 51 First-Person Shooter game was another Midway title released for free with embedded ads as part of a sponsorship with the U.S. airforce. While the sponsorship has long ended, the files are still readily available online.
  • Angry Birds:
    • The original game was originally paid for on iOS devices and PC. However, when it was ported to Android, the developers decided to make it ad-supported freemium. But only the Android version. The other versions are still commercial. Averted for the games released after the original, as they were available as ad-supported freeware for Android from the start.
    • Angry Birds Rio was originally released on March 22, 2011 at the same price as the other Angry Birds games. However, on January 17, 2013, the game was rereleased for free, initially as part of Apple's "Free App of the Week" promotion.
  • Betrayer was released for free on Gog.com in 2023, several years after disappearing from online distribution after the company that made it folded.
  • Bungie's Marathon series is now downloadable freeware, due to the computer system it was built for no longer being available.
  • While Halo 3 is now a free download for the Xbox One, you need to have an Xbox Live account to download it.
  • Skyroads, a shareware racer from Bluemoon Interactive, has been rereleased as freeware.
  • God of Thunder, a puzzle-platformer by Software Creations, was rereleased as freeware in 2002.
  • For a while, the Mektek mod group were allowed by Microsoft to re-release MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries as a free download with their Mekpaks. However, it was removed after Piranha, the new owner of the Mechwarrior IP, objects. Keep Circulating the Tapes ensues.
  • If you can find them, MechCommander, Mechcommander Gold, and Mechcommander 2 are all free to download—MicroProse is long gone, and the Mechcommander trilogy was made available before their sites shut down.
  • Sega gave away a large number of their classic titles as part of the "Make Love, Not War" promotion, which was set up to publicize a sale the company was holding on Steam in early 2016. Participants who signed up each week through an associated site could get Jet Set Radio, Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit, Golden Axe, Binary Domain, Condemned: Criminal Origins, Streets of Rage II, Gunstar Heroes, Viking: Battle for Asgard and Renegade Ops for free.
  • Toys for Bob, the creators of the Star Control franchise, released the partially ported files for the 3DO port of Star Control 2 to the fans, and it was eventually finished and officially released for free as The Ur-Quan Masters for a variety of platforms, followed in 2024 by an official release on Steam as Free Stars: The Ur-Quan Masters.
  • 3D Classics: Excitebike was free to download for a limited time in June 2011 to promote the launch of the Nintendo 3DS eShop.
  • Five Nights at Freddy's World was taken off Steam due to Scott Cawthon himself admitting that the game was unfinished and had several problems, and an updated version was later released on GameJolt. Scott even offered a refund to everyone who had bought the game at the initial Steam launch, regardless of how long they played.
  • Microsoft temporily made Crackdown free on two occassions to promote the release of Crackdown 3. They would do likewise with Crackdown 2 when the game was added to the Xbox One's backward compatibility program.
  • In support of the restoration effort after the Notre-Dame Cathedral fire on April 15, 2019 and to let players see the game's painstaking recreation of the cathedral, Ubisoft offered Assassin's Creed: Unity for free on Uplay between April 18-25, 2019.
  • To the shock of nearly everybody, in 2019, as part of the final backward compatibility update for the Xbox One, Too Human was reuploaded to the Xbox Store free of charge, despite Silicon Knights being ordered in the past to cease sales of it and destroy any remaining copies. Xbox 360 owners can also take advantage of this offer.
  • When obscure Mac video game creators Storm Impact went out of business in the late 1990s, one of the programmers leaked registration codes for the company's two biggest games, TaskMaker and MacSki, on a newsgroup.
  • The creator of Concealed the Conclusion has uploaded it to his GitHub.
  • Gore: Ultimate Soldier was re-released for free as Gore: Special Edition a few years after its initial release. While the files are still readily available, they require a user key (similar to a CD-key), which was generated by a website which no longer exists. However, the single-player can still be played by using one of the existing user keys which can be found shared online.
  • StarCraft is available for free for whoever downloads Blizzard's Battle.net (the remaster, however, is a separate purchase).
    • StarCraft II's multiplayer and Wings of Liberty campaign were made free on November 14, 2017. Those who already owned WoL by itself prior to October 31, 2017 could claim Heart of the Swarm for free instead.
  • In December of 2019, not only was there a limited-time free giveaway of Postal 2 on GOG.com, the original, non-Redux version of the first Postal game was also made freeware.
  • In December of 2015, an HD remastered version of Shadow Complex was announced and given out for free for a limited time through the Epic Games Store for PC.
  • In 2015, Hi-Rez Studio made nearly the entire Starsiege saga (exceptions being Metaltech: Battledrome the obscure spin-off Hunter Hunted and CyberStorm, the later whose publishing rights had remained with Activision) downloadable for free on the series' official website.
  • In 2010, Remedy Entertainment released Death Rally for free. The only part that didn't made the cut for this version is the multiplayer module. The good reception of this release eventually led to a Lighter and Softer reboot.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords got an Anniversary Edition rerelease as DSiWare in 2011 to celebrate the franchise's 25th anniversary. It was available for free download for about four months, and then gone, only available for redownload if you got it during that window. It was later briefly made available a second time for four days in 2014 to celebrate the success of The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, also for free. Notably, unlike the original Four Swords, this rerelease has a single-player mode — and it's anyone's guess when, or even IF, it'll be made available again.

    Visual Novels 
  • The Love Joint studio releases a free version each chapter of their work for free. While they never promise when they'll do a free release, they average about 2 to 3 months after the paid version comes out.

    Western Animation 

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