EA Access has been renamed to EA Play, the subscription service that Electronic Arts offers to gamers that want the convenience of having a wide array of titles to explore, without needing to purchase each one individually.
It is undoubtedly considered to be a win for gaming hobbyists, and subscription-based gaming access has only increased in popularity which has led to more than a few wondering if Valve was going to offer a subscription service of their own, what with the Steam library now containing somewhere in the realm of 30,000 titles.
Yet when the curtain was pulled back on EA Play yesterday on Steam, some were a bit underwhelmed: EA Play on Steam offers access to 47 titles, while EA Play on Origin offers access to 216 titles. The math shakes out to 21.76% of titles having made the EA Play jump from Origin to Steam.
The titles themselves are fantastic, offering popular hits from Battlefield to Titanfall 2, Dragon Age to Mass Effect. Occasionally the title suffers a bit, either due to Origin’s layer that they’ve added (because who doesn’t love DRM on top of DRM) or Steam overlay not playing nicely with said Origin layer, but overall, what is there is decidedly good.
What suffers, however, is the lesser-known titles that Electronic Arts has firmly tucked away in their Origin store; the Ultima franchise, Opus Magnum, Shadow Tactics, Lego Star Wars 3, and literally hundreds of additional titles that, for one reason or the other, simply didn’t make the jump over when EA opted to join forces again with Steam.
This, in and of itself, isn’t particularly egregious, as one would presume that you can simply hop into Origin and use the subscription service there. This isn’t the case; EA Play is segregated on different storefronts, so once users have subscribed and found things missing, they would need to drop another subscription onto Origin’s storefront in order to access every title.
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These are titles that are mostly already on Steam, as well; leading many to scratch their heads in bewilderment as to why one has a far smaller selection.
Further, the layout of EA Play on Steam isn’t necessarily clear-cut either; you’ll need to open accordions in multiple segments to get an idea of what is actually offered, and even then still some things you’ll simply need to be ‘in the know’ to find. Some have gone so far as to state that the obfuscation of titles is intentional, so users cannot figure that they’re paying the same amount for roughly a fifth of the content offered elsewhere.
You can play 10 hours of the newest Madden NFL 21 (a title that few have found favorable) if you own EA Play; it’s presumed that everything EA Play on Steam offers has simply not been found yet.
It’s a brand new service, and there are bound to be stumbling blocks as everyone discovers what they want the service to look like. It’s also a hefty amount of content to explore at $5 a month, and $30 for a year of access through Steam. Here’s hoping that Steam and Origin can come together to offer a service that’s easier to peruse, and offers comparable content.
