Website offers free PC games

From next week PC gamers will be able to download a selection of full version games for free that would normally cost up to £30 on the high street.

Freeloader.com is the brainchild of Pure Entertainment Games (PEG) and is built around the same model as that of independent television in that it plans to sell advertising around programming.

By the beginning of May, when the site formally goes live, PEG expects to have at least 50 games on the site, including Grand Theft Auto, Hidden & Dangerous, Halcyon Sun and a range of football games which are still under negotiation.

The games are downloaded in stages, and consumers are asked to answer three questions when they enter the site. "This enables us to profile advertising to the customer so they don't see ads that are not relevant to them," said a spokesman for PEG.

"This revolutionary model will change the face of gaming and open up the market even more globally," added the spokesman. To put this into perspective, the games industry is already bigger than Hollywood.

Initially, Freeloader.com is concentrating on the PC gaming industry, but PEG has not ruled out the inclusion of console games at a later stage.