Borderline release time
Borderline is free for everyone on October 2, 2026. Steam's countdown on the store page converts the unlock to your local time — wishlist it to get pinged the moment it drops.
Borderline releases on October 2, 2026, and it is completely free. Steam's store page runs the authoritative countdown — at the time of our last check it pointed at roughly 15:00 UTC on October 2, which lands in the late evening for most of Europe and China (around 23:00 Beijing time) and the morning on the US West Coast.
Treat the countdown on the store page as the final word. Unlock times occasionally slide by an hour or two if a developer repushes a build, and this page will be updated as soon as the download actually goes live.
| Intravenous 3: Borderline | Intravenous 3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Not announced |
| Release | October 2, 2026 | Q2 2027 |
| Content | Two full missions | Full campaign |
| Protagonist | Gideon | Steve and Sean |
| Steam achievements | None listed | Listed on the store |
| Platform | Windows (Steam) | Windows (Steam) |
How to get Borderline
- Open the Borderline store page and hit Add to Wishlist. Wishlisting is how Steam pings you the moment the store flips to "free to play".
- At unlock, the button under the trailer becomes a plain free download — no codes, no giveaway window, no newsletter signup. It stays free forever.
- Install is small: 2 GB of disk space, per the official requirements.
There is no pre-order and no paid edition to upsell you — the entire product is the free prologue.
What "free prologue" actually means here
Borderline is a standalone release with its own store page and its own cast chapter. The developer's announcement is unambiguous: two full missions starring Gideon, built to preview "the major gameplay additions and improvements coming to Intravenous 3" — deeper stealth, more reactive enemies, expanded tactical options, weapon customization, new gadgets.
It is not a sliced-off piece of the main game. Borderline tells its own beat of the story: Gideon survived his confrontation with Steve, lost everything anyway, and now has one motivation left.
What happened before release
The prologue spent a week in open playtest in September. More than 5,000 players jumped in, and the studio says they fixed 100+ bugs from that feedback before locking the launch build. If you missed the playtest, you missed nothing permanent — the full release includes both missions, and the playtest only covered one.
The full game
Intravenous 3 is the paid, full-length release: Steve and Sean forced to survive "a relentless manhunt", with mission outcomes that branch into different follow-up scenarios, a dynamic soundtrack by Xtrullor, and deeper build and weapon customization. It is dated Q2 2027 on the store page, and it can be wishlisted today.
Everything this site currently knows about it lives on the full game hub.
