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With the subscription requirement being removed from F2P, the follow-up of Party Chat doing the same makes sense in this regard.
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Xbox Live Gold requirements were also being removed from features such as Party Chat so players could party up (such as in squads on Fortnite or Apex Legends) without need of a subscription. Details here: įree-to-play finally being free-to-play wasn’t the only thing Xbox offered as a part of its efforts to make good with players this season. Starting today, and all Xbox players will be able to access online multiplayer at no charge for a library of over 50 free-to-play games that support online multiplayer. Of course, this comes as a direct result of the backlash from when Xbox tried to raise Live Gold subscription prices, and comes well after Nintendo and PlayStation offered the same thing, but it’s a good move nonetheless. Free-to-play on Xbox will truly mean free-to-play on Xbox.
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From here on out, Fortnite, Brawlhalla, Destiny 2, Warframe, and many more games in a collection of around 50 titles will no longer need players to have an active Xbox Live Gold subscription in order to play online. Xbox formally put removal of subscription requirements for free-to-play games into effect on the console family on April 21, 2021, as outlined in a new Xbox Wire post. Perhaps most importantly, that includes the access to play free-to-play multiplayer games like Fortnite and Apex Legends without need of Xbox Live Gold subscriptions to do it. Fortunately, the situation brought up some other benefits which are finally going into effect. When Xbox almost raised the price of Xbox Live Gold subscriptions in January 2021, it left a lot of people soured and vocal - enough to get Xbox to walk back the decision.
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