Free-to-play games are now actually free on Xbox One and Series X/S, as Microsoft finally remove the need to have Xbox Live Gold.
It’s a loophole that has persisted for years but up until now if you wanted to play free-to-play multiplayer games such as Fortnite and Call Of Duty: Warzone on Xbox then you still had to have an Xbox Live Gold subscription to do so.
Finally though, that is no longer the case and those two games, and more than 50 others, are now genuinely free to play on all Xbox formats.
Not even Nintendo charges for free-to-play games but now, as of April 21, they’re all completely free on all three console formats.
The news was announced last month but still might not have happened if Microsoft had not recently got itself into a PR blunder by trying to raise the price of Xbox Live Gold during the middle of lockdown.
Making free-to-play games free seems to have been offered as an apology for that move, although most gamers consider it long overdue.
There had been rumours that Microsoft might be looking to scrap Xbox Live Gold altogether – especially given that PC owners do not need it to play online – and rely entirely on Game Pass and xCloud subscriptions.
There’s no sign of that happening so far though and so you’ll still need to pay for Xbox Live Gold if you want to play any paid-for games online.
The full list of over 50 free-to-play games is here and also includes the likes of Destiny 2, Rocket League, Warframe, and Apex Legends.
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