EA Play, the subscription service formerly known as EA Access, is officially coming to Steam on August 31st. The service offers a curated library of EA titles for $4.99 a month, as well as a 10 percent discount on all EA products that don't come with the subscription.

Video game subscription services are becoming more and more common these days. Big services like Xbox Game Pass generate a lot of revenue for publishers by offering fans a huge library of solid titles that would cost them hundreds of dollars to assemble for themselves. This new business model goes hand in hand with another relatively recent development in the world of video game economics: game streaming. Services like Google Stadia and Microsoft's Project xCloud aim to give players the ability to stream AAA games to their phones and other devices, and play them without any loss in quality. It's an ambitious goal that's had mixed success so far, but repeated attempts at the concept just go to show how deeply the gaming industry is invested in going digital.

In a push to bring its games to even more digital customers, Electronic Arts is bringing its EA Play subscription service to Steam. This move was forecast about a week ago when the company got its own Steam page for EA Access, promising that the service would be appearing on the online marketplace "very soon." In the days following the reveal of the Steam page, EA gave its subscription service a makeover, renaming it EA Play and merging it with Origin Access, the company's pre-existing game streaming service on PC. As Gamesindustry.biz reports, EA recently announced the newly rebranded subscription service will be hitting Steam on August 31st.


EA Play's arrival on Steam is the latest move in a calculated business campaign for EA. The developer all but abandoned Steam when it launched its own online marketplace, Origin, in 2011. This was a decision the company later seems to have regretted, because late last year it announced its return to Steam, bringing newer games like Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order along with its back catalog. EA titles have been appearing on Steam at a steady clip ever since, which did lead to an increase in profit for the company. The coming of EA Play is likely to continue that trend.

There's no shortage of controversy surrounding game streaming and subscription services. Many fans would greatly prefer to maintain ownership of their own games, and not rely on the whims of a faceless company like EA or Microsoft to decide when they can play what. These are certainly valid complaints, but at the same time, it's hard to disagree with the sheer breadth of quality titles offered by these services, for relatively low rates. EA might not be the best company when it comes to making and releasing games, but EA Play is a solid service with a lot of good titles under its belt, and players wanting to give the subscription model a try could certainly do worse than signing up for this one.