A Way Out price: one copy, two players, and when to buy

Most games cost what the store says. The A Way Out price is stranger than that, because the game cannot be played alone and one of the two people playing it does not necessarily have to pay. Whether that applies to you depends entirely on which shop you buy from — a detail neither storefront makes obvious.

Hazelight's prison-break thriller is co-op only. There is no solo mode, no AI partner, no way to see the ending by yourself. What follows is how the second seat actually gets filled on each platform, what our year of tracking says about the right moment to buy, and whether an eight-year-old co-op game still earns the money.

A Way Out price: the part that can halve it

Electronic Arts' own store terms for the game are blunt about the requirement. The second player needs either "A Way Out on same platform, or Friends Pass free trial installed". That is the Friend Pass: one person buys, the other installs a free client and plays the whole game through to the end.

So on EA's own app, and on console, a two-player campaign costs one copy. That is the single most useful fact about this game's pricing, and it is why comparing its sticker price against other co-op games is misleading — you are usually comparing one purchase against two.

The catch is that this is an EA mechanism, not a universal one.

The split-screen is permanent, not optional — even online, both players see both halves of the story at once. (Official Steam screenshot)

Steam works differently, and nobody tells you

Buy it on Steam and the Friend Pass is not what you get. Steam's own product page for A Way Out states the game is co-op only and points you at a different solution: "Play the entire experience with your friends using Steam's Remote Play Together feature."

Those are not the same thing. Remote Play Together streams the game from the host's machine to the guest — the guest never installs anything and never owns anything, and the quality of their evening depends on the host's upload speed and the distance between them. The Friend Pass, by contrast, runs natively on the second player's own hardware.

You can confirm the difference by looking at what exists on the store. Hazelight's later games each have a separate, free Friend's Pass product listed on Steam — there is one for It Takes Two and one for Split Fiction. There is no equivalent listing for A Way Out.

The practical consequence: if your co-op partner has a decent PC and a poor connection to you, the EA version is the better purchase. If they have no gaming PC at all but can sit next to you, Steam is fine and local split-screen covers it. Work out which of you is hosting before choosing a store, not after.

The original trailer, from the Electronic Arts channel.

What a year of price tracking shows

This is a heavily discounted game, and the spread is wide. Across the twelve months in our record, the gap between the cheapest listing we logged and the dearest is close to ten-to-one. As of today, 14 September 2026, the best price sits in the lower part of that band but is not at the floor.

That shape has a clear implication. When the distance between a good price and the best price is measured in small change, waiting is a bad trade — you spend weeks not playing to save an amount you would not bend down for. Our piece on what a historical low actually tells you makes the general case; this title is a textbook example of it.

The number that matters is on the A Way Out game page, which shows the official and reseller listings side by side along with the lowest figure we have ever recorded. Compare today against that low rather than against the crossed-out RRP, which on an EA back-catalogue title tells you almost nothing.

One warning specific to this game: because it is an EA title, most cheap keys activate on the EA app rather than Steam. That is not a scam, but it is a different library and a different launcher, and it changes which free-friend mechanism you end up with. If key resellers are new to you, our guide to buying keys without getting burned covers what to check.

Set pieces switch control between the two players constantly, which is why neither seat is the passenger seat. (Official Steam screenshot)

Does it still hold up in 2026?

The user verdict has not moved. Steam's rating is Very Positive, and the recent-review score matches the lifetime one almost exactly — a game that is ageing evenly rather than one coasting on old goodwill.

What it does well is structural rather than mechanical. The permanent split screen means you are always watching your partner's half of the story, so there is no downtime and no waiting in a menu while the other person does a mission. Control is handed back and forth constantly. The shooting is unremarkable and the stealth is basic; that is not really the point.

What it does badly is length and replay value. It is a single evening or two, it has one ending worth seeing, and once you have played it with one person the surprise is gone for you if you play it again with another. Price it as a night out rather than as a library staple.

It also requires a persistent internet connection for online co-op, per EA's own terms. Local split-screen on one machine avoids that.

The gameplay trailer, also from Electronic Arts — the clearest look at how the two halves of the screen work together.

It Takes Two is the bigger, more inventive game, and its Friend's Pass exists on Steam as well. (Official Steam screenshot)

Where it sits on the Hazelight shelf

The studio has made four games and they are all co-op or co-op-adjacent, so the buying question is usually which one rather than whether.

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons came first, from director Josef Fares before Hazelight existed, and it is the odd one out — one player, two thumbsticks. It is also consistently the cheapest thing on this list and the shortest.

It Takes Two is the one to buy if you only buy one. It is longer, far more mechanically varied, review scores are higher, and its Steam Friend's Pass means the second copy is free there too. Split Fiction is the newest and carries the highest user score of the four, which is also why it discounts least — a recent game with a strong reputation has no reason to fall quickly.

If you have exhausted the shelf, Portal 2 remains the other obvious two-player campaign and is usually close to free. Our broader lists of co-op games worth buying on a budget and games built for two on the sofa go further.

Split Fiction holds the highest user score of the four and discounts the least, which is what a recent hit normally does. (Official Steam screenshot)

The bottom line

Buy it, and buy it on EA's platform if your partner will be playing remotely on their own PC — the Friend Pass turns a two-person purchase into a one-person one, and no discount on Steam will beat paying nothing for the second copy.

Buy it on Steam only if you are playing on one sofa, one machine, one screen. Split-screen locally is the version of this game that needs no workaround at all.

And do not wait for a deeper sale. On a title this cheap the remaining saving is trivial, and the price has spent the year bouncing around rather than trending down. Check the live figure on the game page, and if it is anywhere near the recorded low, that is your answer.