Electronic Arts has apparently retired the On The House promotion where the company would occasionally give away free games occasionally. According to Eurogamer, an EA service representative confirmed that the program is indeed dead.

According to the article, EA stated…

“Origin On the House has been retired and games will no longer be offered through the program. This change won’t affect any games players downloaded from the service prior to that date – those are theirs to keep forever.

 

“Even though this chapter of On the House is coming to an end, we’re happy that we got to introduce so many great games to our awesome players. We’re constantly looking for ways to improve our service and give our users an even better experience, and we thank everyone for being part of our community.”

The On The House promotion started back in 2014 as EA’s way of luring in gamers with free titles given out throughout the month.

Most times it happened slyly, and gamers would have to spread the word themselves about EA giving out some free titles for Origin subscribers.

Given that EA has started EA Access and seems to want people to pay for the monthly subscription, it seems as if they are moving away from giving away free games. Many game companies have been moving toward the whole games as a service model, so this shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that EA would prefer to have people subscribe rather to purchase a game as a one and done. They want that recurring revenue.

As mentioned, if you already downloaded the games during the On The House promotion, you’ll still be able to pull the game up from your library and play it at your own leisure. However, don’t expect anymore freebies from EA.

(Thanks for the news tip correctus)