EA Access and Origin Access are dead. Long live EA Play, the newly consolidated EA games subscription service for PC and consoles – and it's finally coming to Steam this month.
The all-you-can-eat gaming service will launch in its rebranded form on August 31 on Valve's Steam PC gaming storefront.
The move was announced last October (while the service was still under its EA Access banner), and marks a complete thawing of hostility between the two parties that for a while saw EA games move almost exclusively to EA's own Origin PC platform.
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What is EA Play?
EA Play is essentially the same as EA Access and Origin Access were, just now with a fresh lick of paint. For £4 / $5 month or £20 / $30 a year, you get access to a good chunk of EA's PC gaming catalogue, ten hours play time on selected new releases, and 10% off EA gaming purchases.
There's also a new EA Play Pro tier, priced at £15 / $15 a month or £90 / $100 a year, which gives removes the ten hour restriction on new titles and offers greater access to a wider selection of games, including new releases. However, that's not coming to Steam, and will remain exclusive to EA's own Origin platform.
There's some great stuff to be had from EA Access, including Mass Effect, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Battlefield titles and The Sims. It's a good way of affordably catching up on some of the older EA games you might have missed, as well as getting a taste of some brand new ones, too. Remember, you will have to log-in to an Origin account even for those games that have been purchased through Steam, so don't ditch that password just yet.
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