April Cowers: Dead Space Free On Origin Until May

What is the most terrifying thing? I mean aside from spiders. And human nature. And that one episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Yep, that's right: being forced to admit there is a legitimate reason to open Origin, to dig it out of your PC's sullen grave of a start menu and rack your brain to remember your password. But at least now you can pair terror with terror, as Dead Space will be completely free on Origin until May 8th. And that's free to keep - not just to play.

It's part of a new ongoing promotion called On The House. Basically, every so often Origin will just give away a PC game. For free. Just because (by which I of course mean to attract more users because the world's most ho-hum feature set certainly isn't going to do it).

On The House will continue in the future with a variety of games and deals that can pop up with little rhyme or reason. EA explained:

"Free?! What's the catch? There's no catch. Grab full games, expansions and more at absolutely no cost. Just make sure to act fast because On the House specials can appear and disappear at any time."

Once you take advantage, games are yours to keep permanently - or at least, as "permanently" as something can be held onto in this modern age of downloads services and fickle, frail servers. But still: the original Dead Space! For free! If you've somehow yet to play it, that's pretty exciting.

This particular deal is set to run until May 8th, but there's no telling if another will emerge (and perhaps re-submerge) before then. It's an interesting promotion/feature, to be sure, but I do wish EA would take some steps to, you know, make Origin good already. Or different. Or in some way useful beyond simply being a proprietary launchpad for EA games. You'll have to forgive me, however, if I don't get my hopes up.