EA Access Coming to Steam As Part of New Deal

As we noted last year, a round of EA games has returned to Steam as part of an expanded partnership between the two companies which will include eventual EA Access support.

Right now, you can not only download games such as Mirror’s Edge Catalyst, Need for Speed Heat, and Dragon Age Inquisition from Steam, but most of the recently added EA titles are currently on sale. Even some of the EA titles that remained on Steam over the years have been discounted.

Interestingly, it seems that some EA games on Steam are not currently being sold at a discount. For instance, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (which we just learned is being remastered) is still listed at full price. The first two Mass Effect games are also oddly being sold without any associated discount.

You may also notice that several major EA titles (such as Mass Effect 3, Apex Legends, and Star Wars Battlefront 2 are not available on Steam). While it’s possible that such games could eventually be added to Steam, there’s been no official word that is the case nor has there been any indication of when these missing games may be added to Steam.

On top of that, an ad on Steam hints that you’ll soon be able to subscribe to EA Access via Steam. Again, it’s not entirely clear how this will work, but it would seem that the plan is to allow you to download and play the games via Steam while still requiring you to have an EA account in order to play some of the available titles. It’s a little strange that some of the games available via EA Access are not currently available to individually download on Steam, but again, we believe that more details are coming regarding the specifics of this arrangement.

One question that lingers in the air regarding these decisions is “Why now?” You’d have to ask EA for the official answer, but with companies like Microsoft doubling down on their devotion to ensuring their titles are available on more platforms and even Sony looking to bring certain games to PC, it just seems that more and more companies are realizing that there may be diminishing returns when it comes to only making games available on certain platforms. Even Epic has stated that their aggressive pursuit of exclusives was initiated, in part, due to their desire to disrupt Steam’s grip on the market.