10 free PC programs every gamer should have?

This may or may not add up to exactly 10, we’ll see when it’s done

1.) F.lux: A program that ‘warms’ up your screen at sunset (It knows where you are and when sunset is.) If you don’t know, blue light that comes from screens is actually pretty harmful to your eyes late at night when there is less ambient light around you. This gets rid of that blue light and is VERY comfortable for long gaming sessions at night. My only complaint after using it for around 2 years is that if you’re in the middle of a game when sunset occurs, sometimes when the screen is warming up the frame rate drops drastically for a few seconds while it is in the process of doing so.

Steam

Steam is a digital distribution platform for video games developed by Valve Corporation that offers digital rights management, multiplayer servers, video streaming, and social networking services. This one seems obvious; Steam is the best place to buy games on a PC and is pretty much a must-have.

Discord

While Discord is technically aimed at the gamer, it’s evolved into a hub for all sorts of people. Discord is a voice, video, and text chat that started out as ‘Skype for gamer’ but has become much more. It’s almost certainly the best chat platform on a computer.

Ge-force Experience

GeForce Experience is an optimization/recording/streaming software created by Nvidia, one of the leading graphics card manufacturers. It automatically detects games you have installed and lets you optimize them with one click, saving you the time of scrolling through the game settings to find what works. It keeps track of your graphics card drivers too and updates them when needed. It also has a feature I especially like called Shadow Play. Shadow Play is a recorder that is always running while you’re in-game, but only has the last 30 seconds stored at any time. This means that when you do something cool in-game or something funny happens or… anything noteworthy, really, you can just press a button and it will automatically save the footage.

Any peripheral software

By peripheral software, I mean anything relating to your keyboard, mouse, and headset. The reason I didn’t specify just one is that most companies have their own specific software, the most popular being Razer Synapse, Logitech Gaming Software, and Corsair Utility Engine. They allow you to set custom macros and shortcuts, download drivers, change lighting, and much more.

MSI Afterburner 

MSI Afterburner lets you overclock your graphics card easily, and is probably the best software around for doing it. Even if you aren’t planning on doing serious overclocking, it’s still a good monitor since it comes with Riva Tuner, which allows you to keep track of your system temperature and usage while in-game.

Clownfish Voice Changer

It’s a voice changer; not much else to say. I know it’s not specifically gaming related, but it comes in handy. Mostly good for messing around, which is something all gamer can appreciate.

Nexus Mod Manager

NMM allows you to download mods for a huge selection of games, and it does it fairly effortlessly. Especially useful for Bethesda games like Skyrim and Fallout, but there are many more included. (GTA, Mass Effect, Witcher, etc)

Any Antivirus

Okay, I don’t care how ‘clean’ your computer is; sooner or later someone will try to scam you. The scammer will often have bad grammar and spelling, unconvincing responses, and a generally “hey, I’m a scammer” attitude. But sooner or later, one will slip by you, so you should be prepared. The best free one I know of is Avast, though comments may have some better ideas.

OBS Studio

OBS Studio is the best free recording software, but for some reason, no one knows about it from advertising; it seems to spread only through word-of-mouth. I don’t know if that’s a marketing decision or if the competitors just don’t want people to know about it, but I can’t recommend it enough. There are no watermarks, it can record and stream in 4K, and is fairly simple to use.