Electronic Arts free game code goes viral on Reddit

Battlefield 2: Complete Collection was one of the games downloaded free using the code

A promotion by games company Electronic Arts (EA) offering users one free game allowed them to download as many as they wanted.

The promotion was intended for those who completed a survey, presenting them with a code for $20 (£13) of software to be used in EA's Origin online store.

The amount is enough to download one free game.

But after people found they could use the code multiple times, it was quickly passed around the online community.

A thread was posted on social media site Reddit, where users said it had been possible to download dozens of games during a period of about 18 hours over the weekend.

The promo code became invalid at about 09:00 on Monday.

EA was unavailable for comment.

One blogger, Max Woolf, described his exchange with the company's support service, posting a screenshot of an online chat in which he was told that users would be punished for multiple uses of the coupon.

But on EA's official forum, Origin's community manager Sam Houston said the company would "honour all sales made with the coupon code over the weekend and hope fans enjoy their games".

This prompted numerous comments on Reddit and other sites, including on a video games forum on Amazon.com and on Twitter.

"So apparently EA will honor all sales used with the exploited coupon code yesterday. In other words, they can't work out who did what," said one Twitter user, @RockCalledSteve.

Reddit user I4C wrote: "Nice to see EA, will not punish us for the fault in their system."

Reddit users compiled a list of games that were downloaded using the coupon. Among them are Dead Space, Dead Space 2, Dragon Age 2, Need For Speed Shift, Mass Effect 1 and 2, Sim City 4, Battlefield Bad Company 2 and Mirror's Edge.