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At long last, Electronic Arts has provided some clarity into when EA Access will launch on Steam.
EA Access will be available to Steam this summer, the game publisher said in a statement over the weekend. There’s no word on exactly when it will be available or how much it will cost, but it’s the first time EA has referenced the planned Steam relationship in months.
Last fall, EA announced plans to make its game-subscription service available to Steam this spring but has remained silent since, prompting questions across the industry about the launch’s status.
The move to Steam represents an important shift for EA. The company previously only offered PC players access to its titles on its own Origin service, but as Steam’s popularity has continued to outpace all others by a wide margin and Origin’s has faltered, the company is turning to Steam to attract more PC players.
“We want to make it easy to play the games you love, wherever you want to play,” Mike Blank, EA senior vice president of strategic growth, said in a statement. “Delivering games to the Steam community is an important step in achieving this goal.”
One of the big questions surrounding EA’s decision, however, is how it’ll price EA Access on Steam. The service costs $5 per month or $30 per year on the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, giving players access to free games, trials, and other content.
EA made its announcement alongside the launch of more than 25 games on Steam and a promise of even more titles to come to the service in the coming weeks. The first batch of games includes Dragon Age: Inquisition and Dragon Age II, as well as Need for Speed Heat and Crysis 3. EA didn’t say which other games will be available on Steam in subsequent releases.
EA said it will share more about its plans for Steam and EA Access at its EA Play Live event at 4 p.m. PT on June 18. EA previously planned to hold the event on June 11 but chose to delay it to support the Black Lives Matter movement and protests against racial injustice in cities across the U.S.
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