Google Play Pass is supposed to improve the whole mobile gaming experience. In this guide, we’ll explain all you need to know about this subscription service, including its pricing, features, and other highlights, so you can determine whether Play Pass is something you can look into purchasing.
With no further delay, let’s get this guide started already.
- Related read: How to change Google Play Store country.
What is Google Play Pass?
Google Play Pass
Google Play Pass, in essence, is a high-quality subscription service that was initially launched in the United States on September 23, 2019. It allows mobile gamers to enjoy their mobile games without advertisements. Ads comprise a substantial portion of the playability of games these days. There are only a rare few software out there that do not cater to advertisements on their end.
Therefore, what Google Play Pass does is take advertisements out of the equation straight away, so you do not have to mess around waiting for ad campaigns to pop off until you can finally start to get back into what you were playing. That is just one part of what Google Play Pass does for gamers, and we have to say, it’s a pretty thoughtful one, considering how annoying ads can be in the grand scheme of things.
The other part dangles on the end of microtransactions, which are in-game purchases that you do to benefit from extra perks, such as more lives, currency, and other goods to keep you going. With Play Pass, you will no longer have to worry about ads or microtransactions popping up in the games you download and play. The latter especially is worrisome.
Talk about instances where you have all of your credit card details logged into your Google Play account, and your little one accidentally makes a $500 purchase with just a few taps, considering how lightning-quick the payment procedure of Google Play is. Speaking from experience, those scenarios hurt a fair bit. Anyhow, Google Play Pass is currently unavailable worldwide and doesn’t open up the entire Google Play Store for you.
Instead, it’s only available in a select number of regions, and a portion of the Google Play Store’s apps and games comprise the Google Play Pass subscription. That is to say; you’ll find this Play Store feature offering dedicated apps alongside games as well. We will be delving into more detail on this in the following sections. Read through them for the best results and up-to-date information on the Play Pass service.
What games and apps are included in the Play Pass subscription?
As iterated earlier, Google Play Pass does not have the entirety of the Google Play Store within its reach, but it certainly has a cherry-picked collection of some of the best Play Store games and apps. From highly addictive games like One More Line and Shadow Fight 2 Special Edition to the easy playability of paid titles like Stardew Valley and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, the Play Pass service does make it possible for gamers to delve into the world of mobile gaming efficiently.
Here is an account of some of the best games in Google Play Pass. Unfortunately, the list is too huge for all Play Pass games to be had here, so we’re shortlisting the most memorable ones for now. After this, we’ll follow up with the most special applications you should expect to download on your mobile phone or Chromebook.
- Monument Valley
- Limbo
- Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
- Titan Quest
- Reign: Game of Thrones
- Thimbleweed Park
- Terraria
- Stardew Valley
- Stardew Valley 2
- Sonic the Hedgehog Classic
- Mini Metro
- Grim Valor
- Wayward Souls
- The Gardens Between
- Bridge Constructor Portal
You’ll find some of the best Google Play Store apps to be included alongside games with the Play Pass subscription, so the service becomes worth buying at the end of the day if you cannot stand advertisements on your end.
- Infinite Painter
- Tasker
- Moon+ Reader Pro
- jetAudio HD Music Player Plus
- Hi-Q MP3 Voice Recorder (Pro)
- Pixgram: video photo slideshow
- Business Calendar
- AppLocker
These are some of the most noteworthy apps and games to be included in the Google Play Pass subscription. Let’s further the guide with other burning questions relating to the Play Pass service.
Is Google Play Pass available worldwide?
Unfortunately, no. The Google Play Pass service is not available internationally at the moment. When the subscription launched in 2019 in the United States, the developers started distributing the service in other regions afterward. As a result, play Pass came to Canada, Australia, and even Germany a year later. Fast-forward to 2022, though, Google Play Pass can be enjoyed in several countries—93, to be exact.
You can find the service’s availability in your country via this link, where the developers have laid out all the countries where the Google Play Pass subscription is currently working well. Out of the major countries, such as the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Australia, and New Zealand, some other countries support Play Pass include:
- Angola
- Armenia
- Austria
- Belgium
- Brazil
- Cambodia
- Czech Republic
- India
- Kazakhstan
- Kyrgyzstan
- Malta
- Portugal
- Russia
- Uruguay
- Zambia
How much does Google Play Pass cost?
The pricing of Google Play Pass is an interesting construct. The subscription service is relatively cheaper, especially compared to its Xbox Game Pass, PlayStation Plus, Nintendo Online, and Apple Arcade counterparts. Play Pass will set you back $4.99 a month or $29.99 a year. People typically opt for the yearly pricing model because of the significant savings you’d get compared to the monthly model.
So, there you have your options. It’s either the monthly procedure or the yearly one. Whatever you choose to follow through with, we highly recommend opting for neither option when you first start and taking things forward with the one-month trial period of Google Play Pass. The service lets new users try Play Pass for 30 days before they’re charged for the service for the coming month.
Individuals can cancel their membership anytime, especially before the trial period runs out, so they do not get charged. That way, the significant benefit you’ll enjoy is getting to know Play Pass’s most prominent strengths and weaknesses. It’ll get easier to decide whether the service is worth the $5 per month asking price or the $30 per year upfront charge.
What are the best features of Google Play Pass?
The following is our round-up of the best highlights that Google Play Pass offers.
Ad-free mobile gaming
Advertisements are widespread in the day and age we live in today—these power up multiple industries, providing them with the funding to keep things going. The gaming realm is no stranger to this as well; one doesn’t have to put in any effort to determine whether a game supports ads. What Play Pass can do for you in this regard is take away that hassle and come forth with a glaring solution.
With a valid subscription to Google Play Pass, you can say goodbye to advertisements on the games that come under the umbrella of the service in question. We’ve briefly examined what some of these anointed apps and games look like above. Talk about never being disturbed by an advertisement ever again on mobile phones when gaming or using an app. Pretty convenient, we’ll have to say.
No microtransactions or in-app purchases
When you play a game that has been added to Google Play Pass, you’ll find that all of the bonus and premium content in the context of extra goodies have already been unlocked for that particular title.
That way, what can potentially cost you hundreds of dollars in the long run, will only set you back significantly lesser now, which is, in fact, the cost of the Play Pass subscription only.
Therefore, this is another central solution that the Play Pass service actively flaunts. With the diverse catalog of games and apps added to the subscription, microtransactions or in-app purchases will be a thing of the past.
Some titles, such as live-service ones like PUBG, are full of loot boxes where you have to pay recurring costs with every change of the season.
Although PUBG is not a part of Play Pass, similar titles certainly are. The benefit of having extra content unlocked for you is convenient and cost-efficient.
Family sharing functionality
The third and final prominent feature of Google Play Pass that is worth talking about is its family-sharing potential. If one person purchases a subscription to this service, they can share their account with up to 5 family members. And this won’t be accompanied by any restrictions or like. Things will proceed as if the family members purchased their subscriptions and are now downloading their games and apps.
This is just one of the significant benefits of residing in Google’s ecosystem. There are multiple examples of this that cater to users, such as using the Family Link app, where one parent can control supervised accounts of their children, thereby catering to a whole system of shared accounts in a particular way.
Google Play Pass feels like a worth-it affair if you have a family with you and all of them are specifically interested in mobile games and apps. You can potentially uplift their user experience with the Google Play Store, but only when the rest of your kinfolk also use Android phones and not other mobiles, such as iPhones.
What are the requirements for purchasing Google Play Pass?
There is only a handful of things that you need to take care of before getting into purchasing the Google Play Pass service. Usually, you wouldn’t even have to look at such a section for the requirements of buying a subscription service. Still, the issue here stems from a lack of international availability and a compatibility factor for your mobile. Let’s look at what you need to subscribe to Play Pass actively.
Google has laid out the following prerequisites to accomplishing the task at hand.
- A device that has an Android version 4.4 and above. You can confirm your Android version here.
- The Google Play Store app with 16.6.25 version or above.
- A supported region where Google Play Pass is available, such as the United States, UK, and Canada.
- A working payment method that you’ll add to Google Play Store. Sufficient funds are also required.
- Settings that represent the same billing country and the region you’ve set your Google Play Store app to.
- A personal Google account will be used to subscribe to Google Play Pass. Accounts provided by your work or school organizations won’t work.
- If you share the subscription with your family, you must be the family manager.
How can you get Google Play Pass?
It’s pretty easy to subscribe to Google Play Pass. All you need to do is have your Android phone with you, and that’ll be it. First off, of course, it’s certainly required to tick off all the prerequisites to subscribing to the subscription service before moving forward, so there’s that.
But once you’ve taken care of all that, you can open the Google Play Store app on your Android phone and click on your profile picture in the top-right corner to continue. That will reveal multiple options on your end for you. Select “Play Pass” from there and follow the on-screen instructions to purchase the service. It’s as simple as that.
After clicking on “Play Pass,” you will be shown a series of featured images and text explaining the service and what it can do for you. Make sure to put in your billing credentials on the Google Play Store if you haven’t already purchased done that to buy anything else in the past.
You won’t be charged for your first month of using the service if you’re a new user. That’s because fresh Play Pass users are subjected to a trial period at the start of their subscription, so individuals who haven’t tried it out before can run a test of the service and decide for themselves whether they want to start paying for it from the month after. This applaudable move by Google ensures transparency from their side—that’s for sure.
Final thoughts – Do you need Google Play Pass?
Google Play Pass is a subscription service that blends the best of both worlds on the Google Play Store, which is apps and games alike. Its core strategy is to rid dedicated gamers of advertisements and in-app purchases when playing their favorite games using their go-to applications and software. However, when it boils down to Play Pass being worth it, does it justify its $5 per month price tag? The answer to that is yes.
A load of high-quality games, with many of them being paid titles, and apps are a part of Play Pass, so the major benefit of no ads and an already unlocked establishment of extra content makes the service worth the money. In addition, if you’re a family comprising several people, a single Play Pass subscription will accommodate 5 of your family acquaintances, so no other person will have to pay for the service again.
That is a significant advantage of getting a Google Play Pass subscription, which changes one’s perspective. However, we still need to talk from the perspective of a single individual debating whether Play Pass is worth buying or not; in that sense, the answer varies from person to person.
If someone finds themselves playing or using a select number of games and apps on their phone and finds out that all of their favorite software is added to the Play Pass service, it’ll pay off to subscribe to it. That way, the person in question can utilize their favorite games and services without suffering from tedious advertisements and in-game purchases.
On the other hand, if you’ve scoured the list of added Play Pass games and apps, and none of them seem to interest you that much, you might be better off skipping the subscription for good. It all boils down to your preferences, a highly subjective discussion.
Therefore, we’ll leave the rest of the discussion in your hands as you sit down and think about the advantages that Google Play Pass will bring to the table and whether you need it. Let us know in the comments section what you ended up going with. Thanks for reading!
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