Watch Dogs is yours free forever if you download it now

When I wrote my Watch Dogs review back in 2014, I thought the third-person grand-theft-hack-'em-up was an off-brand multipack of slightly stale crisps. Yet I'm excited that the game is free this week and that if you download it now via Uplay, it's yours to keep forever.

Ubisoft are offering the game for free through their digital distribution service until 4pm on November 13th. If you login to your Uplay client (as if you don't have it running all the time, hey?) then you should be presented with the offer on the main screen. Otherwise you can sign up for Uplay for free and download the client first.

I'm excited about the game going free because of its multiplayer modes, which let you hack into other players' games without them realising. Sometimes you'd need to tail a target for a certain amount of time, or sometimes you'd need to follow and then hack them, at which point they'd be alerted to your presence. Both these modes were thrilling. In the case of the latter, you needed to pick a good spot to begin your hack, then hide until a countdown had finished. Hiding might mean nipping around the game's open world architecture, or it might mean trying to blend in with crowds of pedestrians like a simplified Spy Party. I kept returning to it for months after release, as the playerbase available to invade quickly dwindled.

Now that the game's free, maybe there'll be new players to hack and tail. Maybe I'm in your game right now. Who knows.