Gaming giant EA announced yesterday that all users who enable Login Verification (EA's internal name for two-factor authentication) for their accounts would get free access to Origin Access for a month.
Origin Access is a paid subscription package that lets EA users play some games for free, buy others at a discount, and play some titles weeks before their official releases.
In recent years, the month of October has been unofficially declared National Cybersecurity Awareness Month across various western countries, such as the US, UK, and across the EU, and companies and government agencies have often pushed offers and awareness campaigns as a result. EA's offer is part of the company's campaign for the National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and the offer will stand for October 2019 only.
Here are EA's conditions:
- Current Origin Access Basic members - if they turn on 2FA, they won't be charged next month, which is November 2019.
- Current Origin Access Premier members - same offer, but they'll get access to a free month of Premier access instead, also in November 2019.
- Current Origin Access Basic/Premier members - if they have 2FA already enabled, they will get a free month as well.
The offer ends October 31, 2019, EA said. Users who want to participate will have to have installed the company's Origin client on their computers. Instructions on how to enable the Login Verification feature are available on this EA support page.
EA is not the only company to push for users to enable 2FA. Starting with February this year, Epic Games has been rewarding Fortnite players with a free game perk (a free character dance) if they enable 2FA for their accounts.
Over the summer, Microsoft said that enabling a multi-factor authentication solution stops 99.9% of all account hacks.
Also as part of the October 2019 National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, Google yesterday added a new tool to its service that can check user passwords for leaked credentials, and has also launched an incognito mode for the Google Maps mobile app.