Ea has laid to rest its free games system on Origin. The service known as “On the House” has been on the decline for a while now. At first it provided Origin users with free games on a fairly regular basis, but as time went on games came to On the House on a rarer and rarer basis.
It’s not really a surprise that the service is being cancels after its decline, but it is a small surprise that the service was cancelled without any notice.
“Origin On the House has been retired and games will no longer be offered through the program. This change wont effect any games players downloaded from the service prior to that date — those are theirs to keep forever.”
While we may not be getting anything free from Origin/EA anymore, it’s not too surprising that EA would cut a program that gave things away for free.