You know what really grinds my gears? Opening game clients one by one when I want them all to open and update. So I engaged in a little every-day-scripting to stop the grinding. “Code” inside.
This Gib is actually gonna be a quickie (like I’ve always meant them to be), because I’ve few waffles to make (read: rubbish to say) – Plants vs. Zombies on Origin is free, On The House! Much like the last time, except not sidelined by BF3. Hooray!
I’ve yet to actually play my free copy of PvZ since getting it last time and my only experience with the title is from a pirated version of old. It was good fun then, though I found it wore thin for me sooner than it did for others.
And, referring to the “Special” part of the title, Origin’s also having themselves a Great Games Sale! “Get up to 75% off select titles” the page says. I scrolled through the selection, averting my eyes to avoid temptation, and there are some nice deals going. I may well get Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening to complement the free Dragon Age: Origins I got some time back and round out my Dragon Age experience (when I finally get to it…).
Wah-hey, it’s a another year. I almost skipped this post, because laziness or some such thing, but eventually my urge to type about the newest free thing on Origin won out and now here we are. So to get right to the pointy end, Origin’s latest On the House thing is ye olde Bullfrog classic Theme Hospital. To get it, you need to do the usual On the House thing of logging in to the Origin application/client, check out the Store, and click all over those helpful bits that, currently at least, are trying to tell you about what this very post is also telling you about (that is, Theme Hospital being free, obviously). Which is a terrible way of saying “open the Origin client and follow the prompts.” No idea how long this’ll last, Origin only gives us a cryptic “Available for a Limited Time Only” message, and I’ve no idea what’s up with the capitalisation…
What? Okay, I seem to have run out of ways to headline things that are getting the On The House treatment on Origin. Ignoring my failure in headline composition, EA has dropped SimCity 2000 Special Edition in the freebie-bin. I’m starting to feel like they decide to drop these things every time I neglect this blog, because I’d be compelled to post about their new promotion… Which is nice of them, I guess. Thanks EA.
Yep, that’s right: Dragon Age: Origins, the first game in the Dragon Age series, is free right now, until 14 October 2014, on Origin. The price of zero monies/credits/dosh/green/et cetera. Ala on the house. So get on over there and do the things to get it. Hurray!
Ugh. EA and Origin keep being nice, which is really screwing with that whole “EA is teh devil-company” idea for me… In this latest incident of doing something cool, Wing Commander 3: Heart of the Tiger is free on Origin until 16 September 2014, as part of their On the House thingy. So, y’know, go git a game for nuthin’.
Redeem it on their site or through the Origin application, the choice is yours. Just do it, because it’s free and everyone knows gamers can’t resist freebies.
Hmm, perhaps I shoulda wrote the opening sentences with an “EA hopes to cash in on Star Citizen’s popularity” sorta spin, that’d feed the devil-company idea…
EA is giving The Sims 2 away for free, until 31 July 2014 10h00 PDT (that’s 19h00 for us GMT+2 people), to drum up anticipation for the impending launch of The Sims 4 (I/we/the internet/everyone figures, but EA says it’s “because you’re a passionate The Sims 2 player”). Even better, the edition being given away is the Ultimate Collection, which is The Sims 2 base game plus ALL THE THINGS (eight expansions, ten stuff packs, the whole shebang). So if it’s still before the cut-off time and you haven’t already done so and you like free things, you’d best open Origin up (app or website), keep reading to take advantage.
I really need to quit using that line… Origin’s doing the cheap games thing, with a “Player Appreciation Sale,” “games you would actually play” campaign (poking a little fun at Steam’s “there’s always something on sale” thing which for many just ends up being library filler).
There are some great specials on, with the games being 70% off which is a pretty decent discount. Personally, I’m picking up Dead Space 2, Need for Speed Shift, Bulletstorm, and probably Syndicate too. I’m on the fence about Syndicate, since most reviews I see praise the co-op as its best aspect but I’m usually late to the party with co-op titles and end up hardly playing the co-op bits ’cause everyone’s done with ’em already (nudge nudge, wink wink).
Oh, and here’s something unprecedented: I didn’t find out about this from NAG Online! It came right from the source! Isn’t that something?
And now to go contemplate how terrible I am for starting to actually like EA’s Origin while I wait for the downloads…
Or: Battlefield 3 is free! On Origin! Until 03 June 2014!
Continuing with the trend of blatantly copying what I report here from NAG Online, anyone (with an Origin account) can now get Battlefield 3 on PC for the high, high cost of absolutely nothing (unless you count data for the 19GB (!) download…)! Not only that, but right now you can totally still get the thing-I-forgot-to-report for mere clicks too, which is Plants vs. Zombies GOTY Edition (PC and Mac)! Until 16 June 2014! Huzzah! More freeness and things!
Get Battlefield 3 here and Plants vs. Zombies here, and the low-down on why Origin is throwing free stuff around here. Quick, before they realise what they’ve done!
Of course, you’ll still need to get yourself Battlefield 3’s Premium pack if you want ALL the (Battlefield 3) things, but, at least locally, the vanilla base game is pretty much all that’s being played online now anyway so one might as well wait until that’s on sale/free.
Thanks, NAG Online!
Well, the title about says it all…
EA has decided to no longer sell physical/boxed copies of games through the Origin store. News to me was that you could actually buy physical copies on the Origin store. They claim that only 1% of their customers actually bought physical copies through Origin, though it seems likely to me that’s ’cause people weren’t really aware they could buy physical copies there. Though chances are it’d be cheaper to buy your physicals (heh) through a retailer anyway.
There seems to be some confusion about whether EA/Origin games will now no longer be available as physical copies at all, and the announcement doesn’t exactly deal with that point explicitly, but rest assured that’s not the case. This is not an end to physical copies for Origin entirely, you just can’t buy them directly off the Origin store. This guys says so pretty clearly, and he seems legit.
Source: Origin News
Via: GamesIndustry International
