‘Mafia’ will be free on Steam to celebrate series’ 20th anniversary

2K has announced that the original Mafia game will be free on Steam in September for a limited time.

In a tweet yesterday (August 29) 2K revealed that the 2002 game will be free on Steam between September 1 and 5. It’s worth noting that this is not the remaster, Mafia: Definitive Edition, which launched in 2020.

The original Mafia currently costs £7.99 on Steam, with the price coming back to the platform at 6PM BST / 10AM PT / 1PM ET on September 5.

That’s not all for Mafia with the series’ 20th anniversary, as Mafia 3 and Mafia: Definitive Edition developer Hangar 13 has confirmed that it is currently working on a new entry in the series.

“I’m happy to confirm we’ve started work on an all-new Mafia project!” said Hangar 13 general manager Roman Hladík. “While it’s a few years away and we can’t share anything more right now, we’re really excited to keep working on this beloved franchise and to entertain our players with new stories.”

Hangar 13 has been behind the franchise since 2016, but it’s currently unclear if the tentatively titled Mafia 4 will be a standalone title or a sequel to any of the games in the trilogy.

You can find the original Mafia on Steam right here.

Hladík also talked about how they, the studio, and the franchise have all grown together.

“I’ve been with the company – which was originally Illusion Softworks, an independent game developer in the Czech Republic – since probably the summer of 1997, so I’ll have been here about 25 years this year,” said Hladík.

“Originally I joined the team as a 2D artist, learning a little bit of 3D, but I became a character artist on the original Mafia: The City Of Lost Heaven. When we started on the original Mafia, it was just four or five people. Eventually we grew to ten people; when we finished, it was a development team of around 20-25 people.”

In other news, Genshin Impact developer HoYoverse is looking into fixing the current ransomware issue plaguing the online game.