Xbox Live Gold subscription is no longer required for free-to-play games

For some time now, the online subscription for Microsoft's consoles, Xbox Live Gold, has been increasingly shunned by gamers. The discontent had risen a notch when Microsoft announced at the beginning of the year a price increase for its subscription, planning to raise the monthly price from 6.99€ to 8.99€ and making it much less competitive with the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate in which the Gold is included. It is not impossible that this move was an attempt to push players to subscribe to the second service. In any case, this announcement generated such an outcry that Microsoft reversed its decision within 24 hours. It was a magnificent backpedal on part of the company, which finally announced at the end of last month that free-to-play games would be completely free on the platform.

It may seem strange to talk about "free-to-play" games, but until yesterday things weren't so simple: even if players had free access to these games on Microsoft's consoles, they still had to pay for online play and subscribe to Xbox Live Gold. This is no longer the case. 

The news was made official via the Xbox Wire blog along with a long list with more than 50 games including some very popular ones, like Apex Legends, Call of Duty: Warzone, Destiny 2, Fortnite, Path of Exile, Rocket League, Rogue Company, Warframe, or even World of Tanks. You can see the full list right here.

Be aware that you'll still need an Xbox Live Gold subscription to play the multiplayer modes of any other game that doesn't appear on this list. And don't forget that you can find all kinds of prepaid cards on our comparison site, including some for the Xbox Live Gold subscription.