Need for Speed: Most Wanted for free — EA's On The House program, remembered

EA’s On The House program was the single best thing about the Origin platform, even as the launcher struggled to win users. From its 2014 debut, EA gave away eighteen free games — and number 19 was a good one: Need for Speed: Most Wanted, the 2012 edition from Criterion Games, the studio behind Burnout.

Context, for anyone keeping score at home: the Need for Speed series had 22 official entries at that point, with a reboot on consoles receiving a cooler reception than hoped and a Windows version due later that year. Everyone has their own unforgettable entry — Porsche Unleashed and Underground around here — and racing games fade in and out of everyone’s rotation. On The House was the no-brainer way back in: create an Origin account, claim the promotion, and Most Wanted was yours.

Two games carried the Most Wanted name, worth clarifying: the original 2005 release from Black Box and EA Redwood Shores, and the 2012 Criterion take. EA’s giveaway was the second — known for its expansive soundtrack and its emphasis on online play. The listing noted it was the standard edition, so DLC came separately, and at three years old the hardware demands were more than reasonable.

Did the freebies work? On The House had already handed out Dead Space, Battlefield 3, Dragon Age: Origins, Jade Empire, Theme Hospital, Syndicate, and SimCity 2000 Special Edition, among others. The program itself eventually went the way of all things — Origin shut the promotion down years ago — but it set the template the industry runs on now: free monthly games as a loyalty hook. The modern versions live in subscriptions and Prime Gaming’s free monthly PC games, and if the trailer below makes you nostalgic, physical copies of Need for Speed: Most Wanted cost almost nothing.

Official announcement: EA On The House