EA's “On the House” promotion is basically a 100%-off sale, with the intent of periodically bringing you back to their store. Whatever you acquire is free forever, but you only have a handful of days to claim it. Even if you're not interested in downloading it at the moment, it's good to poke in, press download, and just not actually download it until later. Maybe you'll buy something, too, while you're there. Either way.
This time is Battlefield 4: Naval Strike. If you have Battlefield 4, but do not have the Premium subscription, then this is your chance to grab a portion of its exclusive content for free. As the name suggests, it includes four, navy-focused maps, a hovercraft, and a new game mode. If you've played 2142, you might remember the Titan mode, where you would capture missile launchers throughout the map to weaken a flying carrier, and eventually destroy it. Similar idea, but with an aircraft carrier.
Also, the Westwood-developed action RPG, Nox, is “On the House” as well.
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What troubles me about this
What troubles me about this is that EA is giving away a new DLC for free that I paid for.
Eh, they give away games that
Eh, they give away games that you might have paid for in the past, too.
Boo f’ing hoo… Happens all
Boo f’ing hoo… Happens all the time. Buy something at full price, on sale the next week. Buy a game, goes free to play in a few months. Nature of the beast, suck it up.
Most giveaways are for
Most giveaways are for something SOMEONE has already bought.
This is pretty standard.
This is pretty standard. These days multiplayer-only games are (mostly-accurately) really a service than a product.
These games are worth less as they age for a lot of reasons, but the biggest reason is a decline in user base. You don’t pay for the game as much as you do the full servers. I love BF games, but I honestly think if I wanted the best Battlefield *game*, assuming I just liked walking around empty servers all day or something that doesn’t involve other people, I’d wait to buy them until like 9 months after launch when the bugs and balance are much better.
Encouraging people to pick up (or pick back up) a game that has maybe 5% of the launch month’s population is tough. They probably want to build hype for Battlefield WWI and this is a low-cost way to remind people what Battlefield is/can be.