News video games 21 April 2021, 20:36

Xbox Live Gold No Longer Required for Free-to-play Games

Starting today, Microsoft console owners can play free-to-play titles that require a network connection without having an active Xbox Live Gold subscription.

Microsoft has kept its promise to Xbox owners and removed the requirement to pay for the Xbox Live Gold subscription in order to play multiplayer free-to-play games. Even the Gold tab disappeared from the main menu of the consoles, which can only be found in the section devoted to Xbox Game Pass. We can play over 50 titles without paying even a penny. The full list can be found here, and below you can take a look at some of the most important titles.

Examples of free-to-play games, which we can play without Xbox Live Gold:

Announcement of the upcoming change appeared in January, this year when the company tried to cover the bad impression caused by the announcement of price increase for the Gold subscription. The decision seemed quite extreme, but since the competition in the form of Sony made a similar move some time ago, it was impossible to suppose that Microsoft - having an ace in its sleeve like Xbox Game Pass - would act differently.

Both companies decided to fight for the content of our wallets, enriching their services with new elements, instead of forcing us to pay for something that, for example, PC gamers have had for free for years. Xbox crew is constantly expanding the aforementioned Game Pass - buying out developers such as Bethesda or providing backwards compatibility for titles from previous generations of consoles, also in the cloud, as part of the subscription - and Sony recently made the best games from the PlayStation 4 available to PS Plus subscribers on PlayStation 5. What's more, new content for the Japanese subscription service has leaked online today, we'll let us know of which a separate post when it's officially announced.

We, the players, can only rejoice that the industry giants are not tempted to collusion and did not persist with the old solutions, but went out to meet the expectations of the audience. These are good times for fans of digital entertainment and let them last as long as possible.