Estate planning as a EA App account holder

The EA app (which replaced Origin) is Electronic Arts’ PC game launcher and store. The estate-relevant assets are the EA Account and the Entitlements tied to it — purchased games, expansions, downloadable content, and EA Virtual Currency — plus any EA Play membership and any EA Wallet balance funded by redeemed EA gift cards. Under EA’s User Agreement the EA Services are licensed, not sold, under a personal, non-transferable license, and a purchased EA PC Game is authenticated to one EA Account and is not transferable. EA publishes no deceased-user process and no beneficiary designation, so an executor’s practical work is capturing what can be documented, stopping any recurring EA Play billing, and deciding whether to close the account.

EA App game library are forfeited at death under the program's terms. The terms explicitly state that game library are not the account holder's property and cannot be inherited, transferred by will, or assigned through any estate planning mechanism.

What happens at death

EA’s User Agreement states that "The EA Services are licensed to you, not sold," and grants "a personal, limited, non-transferable (i.e., not for sharing), revocable and non-exclusive license to use the EA Services." The account "is yours, don’t share it." Purchased PC games are tied to the account: "Authentication is limited to one EA Account per serial code, which means the EA PC Game is not transferable." If an account is terminated, "you will not have access to your EA Account or Entitlements and may be barred from accessing or using any EA Service again," the license terminates with it, and "no Entitlements will be credited to you or converted to cash or other forms of reimbursement." EA Virtual Currency "has no monetary value and has no value outside of our products and services," "cannot be sold, traded, transferred, or exchanged for cash," and is non-refundable. Neither the User Agreement, the Terms of Sale, the EA Wallet and Gift Card Terms, the EA Play Terms, nor the Privacy and Cookie Policy contains any language addressing death, estate, succession, or beneficiaries, and EA Help publishes no deceased-user article. In practice the game library is not inheritable: the license is personal and ends with the account. Two narrower points cut the other way and are worth an executor’s attention. EA’s Terms of Sale provide that "When expressly authorized by EA in writing, certain EA Content may be gifted, traded, and/or transferred," and EA Help documents an agent-assisted process for merging EA Accounts and moving games between them — written for a player’s own duplicate accounts, with restrictions, and not offered as a death process, but it means transfers are something EA can do rather than something its systems cannot do. Separately, EA Wallet funds are the one balance with a documented path out: the Wallet terms state that unused funds do not expire, "may become subject to statutory unclaimed property laws," and that "EA will attempt to contact you before escheating any unused funds," so an unspent wallet balance can end up claimable from the state.

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