Origin has long been maligned by many gamers, mostly due to its association with mega-publisher Electronic Arts, because it’s basically cool to hate on that one company. Now setting that aside for a second, there has been a very notable change made to Origin, with respect to Origin Access & EA Access subscriptions. These two elements comprise the premium offerings from EA as part of trying to entice PC gamers to jump to their platform.
EA Access subscriptions are typically targeted at console users and gives them access to a library of curated EA games. It’s a pretty solid way of getting access to new sports titles and the like. The problem is, the two services are very similar. Origin Access and EA access offer many of the same services to gamers, so it does kind of make sense to combine them. They will offer two variants under EA Play—one called EA Play Pro which includes the same benefits as EA Access Premier—and the other that’s the same as the Basic tier, with access to the game library and other bonuses.
An Origin Access membership is available on PC and has two tiers. Basic membership has the same price and benefits as EA Access – plus a ton of great games from third party publishers. A Premier membership includes all of EA’s new games on PC at launch and more for $14.99 month and $99.99 a year. And it looks like those prices will remain for now. The basic EA Play subscription will cost $4.99 per month or $29.99 annually. EA Play Pro is $14.99 per month or $99.99 annually. Prices are in USD.
EA announced today it’s planning to rebrand the Origin Access and EA Access subscription services. Soon both of these services will share the EA Play moniker and will be bundled together. The services remain separate for now, as the two services were designed that way. The reasoning for this is so that Electonic Arts can consolidate the two services for when they plan to deploy them to Steam this year.
What About Old Customers?
Customers of the Origin Access and EA Access services will get to keep all of the previous benefits. This means that all of the same library of games, discounts, and preview perks will remain in place. EA plans to roll out new features like exclusive challenges, rewards, and in-game items as part of the new rebrand.
You can read the full announcement about the rebranding on the EA news blog.
