If you’ve been keeping up with EA’s recent activities, you might know about Origin Access Premier, a subscription based service that they’ve integrated into their online service, Origin, offering a library of EA’s titles, discounts, and early access to its subscribers. In the wake of this service going live, though, one of Origin’s other services has been taken down.
“On The House” was a program that regularly offered Origin users with free giveaways of video games, and in the past has offered up some pretty significant titles, including the likes of Mass Effect 2, Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault, and Dead Space. However, the service has now been taken down. There will no longer be any more giveaways, though EA has confirmed that any games users got through it up until now will, of course, remain in their libraries.
“Origin On the House will be retired and games will no longer be offered through the program,” an EA rep told Rock Paper Shotgun. “This change won’t affect any games you downloaded from the service prior to that date–those are yours to keep forever.”
It makes sense, I guess, that they’re doing this. With them rolling out new subscription services that offer much of the same benefits as something like, say, Xbox Game Pass does, they’ll want all the attention to be squarely on that. Origin Access Premier, of course, does give subscribers access to the “Vault”, which is a collection of 100+ EA and third party titles, for no extra charge over just your subscription fees. Adding free giveaways as part of “On The House” on top of that probably wouldn’t have made much sense for them from a business perspective.