A selection of racing games from UK developer Codemasters is now available for no additional charge on the EA Play service.
The move follows on from the high-profile, $1.2bn takeover earlier in the year which saw EA fend off interest from Take-Two to take control of Codemasters. Codies, based near Guildford in the UK, holds the rights to the official F1 game licence, as well as Project CARS and — from 2023 — the official WRC licence.
With Codemasters’ titles now falling into EA’s domain, the games are eligible to appear on the EA Play service — and from today EA Play members will gain access to a selection of recent hits. That includes DIRT 5, F1 2020, and Grid, as well as some older titles in the series: F1 2019, DIRT 4, and DiRT Rally 2.0.
You won’t, however, find any of the Project CARS titles in the available games. Although Codemasters owns the series now, the first three titles in Slightly Mad’s franchise were all published by Bandai Namco, and it’s likely that the rights still belong with BN.
EA Play is EA’s subscription gaming service. For a fee of $4.99 a month, or $29.99 a year, gamers can get access to titles across the EA portfolio without having to buy each title individually. There’s also early access for certain new release games, discounts on games, DLC packs, and season passes, and EA Play-exclusive challenges and member rewards.
While EA Play is available on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC (via Steam and EA’s own Origin), you don’t actually need to pay for separate access if you happen to be an Xbox gamer. That’s because EA Play is included within the price of Xbox Game Pass for PC and also Xbox Game Pass Ultimate across all platforms, as of June 2021. However, under Game Pass Ultimate, these particular EA titles will only be available to console players.
With Forza Motorsport 7 soon to disappear from Game Pass, the availability of EA’s titles will come as good news to Xbox racing game fans.
See more articles on Codemasters, Electronic Arts, and Xbox Game Pass.
Gamepass! Best value in gaming history.
Where? its not on origin nor EA Desktop
Only concle