Do you need PS Plus and Xbox Live Gold to play Apex Legends online?

Apex Legends just launched a few days ago on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC, allowing anyone from around the world to download the game for free and jump straight into the battlefield.

For PC players, this meant that they just needed to download Origin, create an account, and download the game. PS4 and Xbox One owners, on the other hand, needed to find the title in the online store.

For most online games on console, however, you need to be subscribed to either PS Plus or Xbox Live Gold to access multiplayer features. This, therefore, begs the question: Do you need an online subscription to play Apex Legends online even though it’s entirely free to play?

In short, yes and no—since Apex Legends is a free-to-play game, you don’t need PS Plus to play the game online with your friends on PS4. But you do need Xbox Live Gold to play the game on Xbox One. This is the only system that requires you to also have an Xbox Live Gold subscription to play the game online.

You can, of course, get some free cosmetics if you have a subscription to one of these services, including Origen and EA access on PC, but it’s not required to play the game online for PC and PS4 players.

Most free-to-play games will never ask you to buy an online subscription to play them since it would defeat the purpose of being free-to-play. The same can be said about Fortnite: Battle Royale, Warframe, and a bunch of other titles that you could play right now on your systems for no extra charge.