Slashdot Mirror
EA Introduces "Online Pass" To Get In On Used Games Market
EA Sports has unveiled a new feature that they hope will help them get a piece of the lucrative used games market: the Online Pass. Each of their new titles will come with a one-time code that allows access to "premium" content and features. Players who buy the games used can get the same content, but will need to pay $10 for the privilege.
"According to EA, the content can include anything from title updates and downloads to features like online leagues — and even online gameplay and multiplayer modes. ... EA will offer 10-day trials of Pass content so that users can see what they would be getting. So far, EA seems to be limiting the premium add-on experiment to its sports portfolio. ... The company has apparently gained the support of retailer GameStop, which has been watching with a close eye efforts on the part of publishers to discourage its thriving used games business. According to the retailer, encouraging premium content add-ons still benefits GameStop, since it sells PlayStation Network and Microsoft Points cards. It praised EA's Online Pass as 'forward-thinking.'"
I hope this doesn't end up like those "free-to-play" online games where players can buy "premium content" for in-game advantage
Yay... a yet another attempt to work around the First Sale rules. All they're doing is relabeling part of the package, so instead it's an "add-on" now.
By "title updates" they really mean bug-fix patches. In other words, this "Online Pass" thingy is strictly negative.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
EA already uses "Service Updates" as an excuse to stop supporting online play after a certain period of time for many of its titles. http://www.ea.com/2/service-updates Now, it's going to restrict the ability to even update the game? FTA, "According to EA, the content can include anything from title updates and downloads . . . ." So, to paraphrase, if I want to play my game on another console, or my console croaks and I replace it, I might not be able to download the updates (and there will be updates because the title shipped will be buggy) without paying again?
Make love, not reality television.
To bring the book industry into the 21st century I propose a system whereby printed books be changed such that instead of the second half of the book you get a code which will allow you to access the end of the story through the publishers website.
The ending shall be a free add-on which you may only access through our online service.
You will be prohibited from transfering access to the ending to anyone since it's a service rather than an item.
If you want to know the ending after you've bought a book second hand you'll have to pay a 10 dollar fee to us.
With online distribution (like steam) they could stop second hand sales altogether, and as a bonus you don't need a silo for your discs. Pretty awesome in my opinion.
I don't get it when people say that EA "has changed" and that Activision is "more evil than EA". They're both just as evil as the other one is. They don't care about you, the consumer. Well they do care about gouging the consumer for all the cash that they can. We need to show them that we will not tolerate this. We have to stop playing games from these publishers. That means don't purchase it. That means don't play it at a friends house. And that means don't pirate it. Tell your friends about this and tell them to tell their friends. If word gets around, maybe they'll act less evil than they are now (not likely, but you never know).
and give it to independent studios and offers like that of wolfire's "humble bundle indie" . As if awful DRM and little re-play value wasn't enough for today's games, now this. Pass..
artificial.
"Please enter word 15 paragraph 2 line 4 page 23 of the game manual in order to proceed"
This article should be titled:
EA games does yet another thing to piss me off...
We should start a new Slashdot and return control to the geeks. It actually wouldn't be that hard to get some users to
Stephen King tried this - purchase a book chapter by chapter as an experiment. It failed, and the book was never finished.
Is all about fight the First Sale doctrine. Make games a "not transferable account", so you can't re-sell the game you have buy (only part of it, here).
I wonder we will see the ones like General Motors, fighting the user car industry.
-Woof woof woof!
It's interesting that they're trying this experiment out with their sports video games. Sports video games released on an annual basis go down in price faster than any other genre. You can find a full boxed copy of a sports title from just a few years ago for under 5 USD. So by the time really cheap used copies hit the market, the sports season for that particular title is already over and EA is prepping for the release of the next year's edition.
Freedom is drinking a beer in the park when you're supposed to be at work.
Doesn't shit like this just piss of people more and give them a greater incentive to pirate the games, instead of paying for these terrible extra fees?
Yes, this is exactly like saying that if you sell a book to somebody, then they're not allowed to read the last chapter until they pay the publisher $10. Its COMPLETELY LUDICROUS, and I hope people realize it.
Ugh, I'm already boycotting Ubisoft for its draconian DRM, now I've gotta boycott EA for its content locking out and violation of property rights? The way video game studios are going, soon everything's going to be owned by either one of those two, or Activision. At least they aren't doing anything terrible right now, right? (*reads about lawsuits with infinity ward*) Agh!
GCS/MU/P d- s:- a-- C++++$ UL++ P+ L++ E+ W++ N o K- w--- O M+ V- PS+++ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5- X R++ tv+ b++ DI++ D++ G+ e++ h-
I wonder how much EA would have charged for GTA online levels (if they had made the game)? I know they really wanted to get a slice of the pie for such a big selling game - but the fans know what that would mean... a game that's been split up and sold in many parts to get £100's instead of £45. Also dodgy frame rates and games that are just boring to play.
I recon GTA would have cost £40 fo the game and £10 for each multiplayer (15 different levels), making quite a bit more profit and costing the average gamer much more... But I wouldn't have brought it.
This was in Mass Effect 2 - Called the Cerbus Network card, basically you'll get a heap of DLC with it, which expands the game by a great length. It costs IIRC 1500 Microsoft Points on XBOX Live to buy a code with it, obviously for people who purchase the game second. The bad thing is EA is now releasing DLC that require you to use MS Points regardless if you have the Network Pass card or not - (See Alternative appearance/Weapons packs, which dubious value to the game compared to the network pass content anyway).
Their sports games already lose their multiplayer after a year or two, yet they expect people to buy used copies and spend extra money to get a bit of content that still won't address the lack of multiplayer. I don't expect this to go very well.
My webcomic
This is just the beginning. What the big game publishers REALLY want to do is get rid of the used market entirely so that new game prices never have to go down to compete with used ones. As they build acceptance of this "You get more of the product when you buy it new" model and as people's capacity to download and store more data increases they will gradually move more and more of the product off of the disc and into the "DLC" bucket. Or they might just do what BioShock did: ship the content on the disc but make you pay for part of it. Either way, you'll eventually have to pay full price to get access to the content whether you bought it new or used -- and with no used market to compete with, the price won't drop nearly as fast over time as it does today.
I presume you mean The Green Mile? No , it didn't fail, and yes, it was finished. They even made it into a film.
When I bought Bad Company 2 it came with a VIP code. A one time only VIP code. What ran through my mind is what if I have to format my PS3, or a firmware update requires "servicing" (see former), etc. What happens then? What about going over to a friends house to play? Etc.
This is nothing but a money grab without any consideration for the needs and *rights* of the legal purchaser.
A book is a terrible thing to use this approach on. It takes me all of 30minutes at most to read a chapter assuming its a long one. Then your gonna make me wait a month or so for another one. Theres no way im gonna bother reading a book like that in such a stop start manner. It does work for games though as there have been a few successful episodic games.
From what I've heard regarding this, you'll need to pay the $10-15 just to be able to play the title online.
What's really crappy is that people still sell used games to GameStop and people still buy their used games. Granted, sometimes you will find a decent deal on an older game. Example, found a copy of Guitar Hero III for PS3 yesterday for $10. That's not bad if you've not dipped into the music games. But most newer games are only going to be $5-10 lower than retail. Glyde http://www.glyde.com/ or even Ebay are much better options than selling to GameStop. The seller will get more money for the game and in most cases the buyer will get the game at a better price.
Something I think is fishy about this is that GameStop may use this to justify giving less credit/money for titles that use this system while still charging out the wazoo for the resale of the same title. Either way, there are better options for buying used. Hopefully the public will vote with their wallet and choose not to purchase these titles.
umm, he released The Green Mile serialized, and serialized novels have been around for a few hundred years. The book you're referring to is The Plant, but the experiment there was not serialization, it was some weird bastardization of the honor system where 75% of readers had to pay for him to keep writing.
This is just EA's "Project Ten Dollar" and it is not limited to just he sports games. It has already been featured in Dragon Age Origins and Mass Effect 2. Both games included content that you got for free with a code that came with the game, but you had to pay $10 to get if you bought it used.
Clovis
^ Clovis, look! It's that guy you are!
This system tells me even more that my $60 just bought a license to play a game owned by a publisher. Ownership, as we know it with video games, is dying a slow death.
I, for one, am grateful for all these DRM systems and DLC schemes and such as they helped me make the decision of stop buying games and the money I’m saving with that!
I would have to disagree, and add that this might actually be a good thing. They are offering extra content for the $10, not requiring it to buy the used game. You can still play the game without the extra content. Obviously, this system can be abused, but the idea itself isn't bad and may be a way where games are offering MORE to the original purchasers, and re-buyers can get the same extras for a small fee.
Keep in mind, that they owe patches, updates only to the original purchaser, and technically, they don't even owe that. Support isn't free (downloads, hosting servers, etc.) and when a game is sold to someone else, it effectively doubles the amount of support they had built into the original price. If done right, this would be a reasonable way to offer longer support and *still make a profit* while not mucking up the used market, since the used games are still 100% playable without the extra support.
The key to this is the buyer understanding what they get (EA is offering a free trial) before they plunk down an extra $10. For some, it will be worth it, for others, not so.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
> Support isn't free (downloads, hosting servers, etc.) and when a game is sold to someone else, it effectively doubles the amount of support they had built into the original price
Uh.. how do you work that out? One person using it at a time, one set of support costs.
If they ever dare bring this into tic-tac-toe on my EDSAC then I shall be rather angry and I may growl once or twice.
Todd: I hope it proves as delicious as the farmers that grew them
Sounds like a normal television show to me.
Uh.. how do you work that out? One person using it at a time, one set of support costs.
Updates downloaded twice, not once, doubling the cost for bandwidth. If they provide a server, Player #1 plays for 6 months and gets bored, sells it, Player #2 plays for 6 months, effectively doubling the server load if only a single person had bought it. (using averages, the effect is literally 100% linear increase in load) Not all support issues are doubled, but their net cost to support (depending on the game) is higher when the game is resold. While these expenses are not tremendous, neither is the $10 fee, and the games would still be single player playable without the extra support. Again, this *could* be abused, but it could also be done to provide good value, depending on how it is implimented. EA's method seems pretty reasonable since it includes a trial period and the price is relatively low.
Now if they made it where you had to pay the $10 to even PLAY the game, then that would be an issue. And it might be with multiplayer only games.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
One of the comments on the site with TFA is from someone that keeps his sports games for a long time because of the replayability that online playing gives.
Consider for a moment that with the "Online Pass" at any point EA can drop (or sneakilly slow down to a crawl) all multiplayer, user created content and online community features on a game "we don't support anymore" so as to pump-up sales of the new version. What EA is doing here is to try and control the lifecycle of a game after the sale way beyond just second-hand sales.
Basically they're doing the same as Ubisoft but with a bit of carrot, not just the stick.
75% of the readers had to pay, at a time when less than 5% of the internet population had ever bought anything online (and no where near 75% had access to a credit card at all). It was an experiment designed to fail.
The $10 voucher allows you access to stuff that 5 years ago, before DLC existed, would have been included on the original game CD.
Sorry, but as an old man in my mid-40s with a quarter century of gaming history, modern gaming and most modern games are *CRAP*!!!
Games used to be about entertainment that lasted a lot longer than 6 hours, was actually challenging and was fun when you got a few friends round to LAN party with you.
Now it's all about leeching more money out of parents by encouraging kids to always buy some piece of DLC that they can brag about to their friends because they're the first "on the block" to get it - this is why morons queue at midnight for the latest game release, Harry Potter book or overpriced Apple gadget.
Still, I've more than enough old games to play through again, load mods into or play via an emulator, as well as few nice free/Open Source games... the rest of you rabid fanbois have brought this on yourselves by buying the crap in the first place, and you're all welcome to it.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
In the context of my hypothetical book:
The ending of my book is also "extra content". I am offering "extra content" for the $10, not requiring it to buy the second-hand book.
You can still read the book without that "extra content".
Keep in mind, that I owe proofread copies and endings only to the original purchaser, and technically, I don't even owe that.
Proofreading and providing corrected and finished copies over the net isn't free.(Staff, hosting servers, etc.)
and when a book is sold to someone else, it effectively doubles the amount of proofreading I had built into the original price.
My book is still 100% readable without the spelling corrections or ending.
They are offering extra content for the $10, not requiring it to buy the used game.
Does it not strike you as slightly suspicious that a major complaint of many modern games is that you only get 6 hours of play for a £35/$50 game but can *PAY MORE* to extend the life of that game?
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Nonsense. They are doing it do devalue the product you bought. They are simply labelling parts of the game as "free bonus" to screw you out of your ability to resell the game.
If you really think they'll add more stuff, I would love a hit of whatever you are smoking.
But I guess with enough marketing they can sell this as beneficial to the consumer. It obviously already works on some.
Those are crosses they choose of their own free will to bear.
They include DRM to stop you from passing on the patches along with the game when you re-sell it.
They tie multiplayer to their own servers rather than allow players to host their own.
They shoot themselves in the foot and then charge their customers and the owners of second hand games for the medical bills.
Care to in any way elaborate?
If I were to sell a book as described how would it be different from this scheme?
...to play multi-player on XBox Live. What a bunch of greedy bastards. The only thing this type of behavior does is make me more selective about the games I play, for example, I'll never buy another Ubisoft game while they have that 'always online' DRM. I stopped playing Company of Heroes when they went this route until you could play with the disc installed again. Greedy bastards.
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"We actually view the second sale market as an opportunity to develop a direct relationship with our consumers, and with Online Pass everyone has access to the same premium online services and content regardless of how and where you buy the game."
No, you dumb twat, that's how the old model worked; this new model just sucks. If you're really that worried about making more money off used games, just add more advertisements to your sports games; I'm sure most of your fans will just find this more "realistic." "Develop a direct relationship with our consumers?" What kind of relationship would that be? The kind where they bend over and you **** their brains out?
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
No, he's talking about "The Plant". He was putting it out chapter by chapter, and it was on a "pay what you think it's worth" system. Not very many people paid.
I did see an article where King said that he would never do the book-by-book experiment of "The Green Mile" again; as of a few years ago you could buy the book whole as it hit the next printings.
Funny, I couldn't find one reference to "Walled Garden" in the comments here.
Wonder why that's such a popular thing to repeat about Apple's iphone/ipad/ipod touch devices, but not console games?
1. Make a fridge that lasts 30 years
2. Expand company on sales of superior product
3. Reduce costs and add features
4. Eliminate remaining competition
5. The 3 remaining fridge brands can now last 5 years
6. Further reduce costs and trim features and quality
7. Massive profits!
This is how EA would like the video game industry to progress. Just as fridges that last 30 years eventually hurt sales rather than boost sales, so do used video games. Small companies compete with other companies for sales. Large companies compete with themselves.
They are not "offering extra content for $10". They are doing exactly waht BioWare did for Mass Effect 2. They are attempting to fuck the first-sale doctrine in the ass by forcing all people who buy the game used to pay THEM as well. (ME2's is called cerberus network and bypasses XBL DLC)
On the one hand, part of me is pissed off by this sleazy attempt to wring (extort might not be too strong a word) more money out of a product that was sold, fair and square, to the original buyer. No, it wasn't "licensed". It was sold. "Here's a game. It's cool. Give me $50 and it's yours." ...sold. Demanding another piece of the value I paid for, should I choose to sell my game to someone else is symptomatic of the screwed up view that software developers have of their customers.
On the other hand, if people are stupid enough to pay $50 for a game that the next guy will get to buy for a fraction of that, there's at least a small amount of satisfaction that both buyers are allowing themselves to get reamed.
What's worse is that I was reading the biography of Abraham Lincoln, and I got to choose which ending to buy. In the good ending, he drop-kicks the gun out of John Wilkes Booth's hands and ends up dating a former slave who looks like Halle Barry. Something just seemed wrong about the whole deal.
EA needs to get its games RIGHT before it thinks about it's so called future. Bug ridden pieces of crap - across the board. battlefield bad company 2? the worse game to come out of production to date. take a hint from valve EA - the customer IS and always will be right, as it stands right now I WILL not buy another EA game due to the horrid i've gone through with bad company 2.
60 bucks wasted.
Ubisoft - I'll NEVER buy assassins creed 2 - screw your DRM, Torrents is a much better option, did ya know DRM free?
sad sad world gaming is turning into - will it ever stop?
They're already doing this with their role playing games. Mass effect 2 and Dragon age both had similar codes that unlocked entire characters/quest chains. I got both games via Gamefly and had to decide between paying an extra $10 fee to get the entire game I was renting or playing an incomplete game.
They're starting this with their SPORTS franchises? Who the hell buys used sports games? They're out of date a year later because the players (and potentially the teams) are all wrong! I admit I don't buy many sports games to begin with, but the last time I bought a used one was back in about '97ish when I picked up NHL94 for my SEGA Genesis collection.
http://www.chmodoplusr.com/
Then it sounds like you need to be shopping at Good Old Games where they treat you like an actual customer, instead of a wallet with feet. NO DRM, NO charging extra for expansion packs (in fact they are already installed and included) NO limits to how many times you can re-download something you've paid for, plus lots of extras like strategy guides and soundtracks INCLUDED. Everything "just works", no hassles with paying, or backing up installers, and new games are added almost daily.
I'm a firm believer in voting with your wallet, and if the game companies see that enough of us are fed up with the bullshit maybe they will grow the tiniest of brains, if for no other reason than to keep their bank accounts from shrinking. So far Good Old Games is the ONLY online game store I've found where I don't have to worry about DRM or bullshit, just pay, download, and play. So support those that don't treat you like shit, and vote with your wallet. Oh and to the poster above with the "EA Kill List" it is nice to know that MoH:PA, which BTW they are STILL SELLING as part of the MoH:10th anniversary pack, has already had the online killed before I even got to install it. Nice.
As for TFA, call me nutty, but it is like the PHBs at these game companies want piracy to be the better deal! Crazy prices, shitty alpha quality code that often needs everal large patches just to be usable as intended, and now the STD known as DLC, or what we PC gamers formally called "free mods and maps" only they bend you over and don't even bother with a reach around. Meanwhile the pirate version won't phone home, will have ALL the content, and won't make you jump through flaming hoops just to use the damned thing. Oh and thanks to having the DRM stripped out you are actually LESS likely to get a virus than with the retail code! Man is this a fucked up situation or what?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
This sure beats the Steam method where buyers of used games are totally locked out, in the case of modern warfare can only be activated by one steam account and only one. They wont even unlock it even if you have the physical copy and a receipt from Amazon marketplace.
Drop the AAA players who want nothing more than your money. Pickup free/donationware/small-payment-and-drm-free indie games that are actually fun, and not just rehashed trash from yesterday with new textures.
http://tigsource.com./ Start here. If you have an Xbox 360, check out the Indie Games section under the game marketplace.
You do not HAVE to play into their game when they are intent on being the only ones who ever win.
This plague of automatic DLC must be stopped. It has become almost expected of the major game houses to release an incomplete game, then a week or month later they sell a bunch of DLC, which was probably supposed to be part of the game in the first place. Why can I resell the content that's on the disc, but not the stuff I downloaded a week later ? How do I know the DLC wasn't originally part of the game, that some ethically-challenged pencil pusher decided to part out and charge more money ? They're shipping an unlock code, wouldn't that suggest that this content is already in the package, but locked away behind yet another layer of bullshit DRM ?
It used to be, if you wanted to sell an add-on to your game, you had to ship it on a disc so the "barrier to entry" was higher, in the sense that the overhead of distribution and support was too painful to bother shipping $10 worth of content. Gamers would also tear you a shiny new asshole if you dared ship them a CD with only 10mb worth of content (and 600mb of advertising videos). Diablo 2 LOD was a real expansion pack, it added new features, it added a whole new full-length episode, and it was reasonably priced. Despite the dependency on the base game, it provided enough content to stand on its own as a product. In other words, if you took the expansion and subtracted the original content, you were still left with a big slab of entertainment well worth the $35.
Since this is Slashdot, what if you bought a brand new car, and it came with a one-time-use "content access code" for the steering wheel. You key in the code, you get to drive your car all you want. Then after a few years you sell this car to your broke-ass friend, who finds out the thing can only move in a straight line. The dealership wants him to pay another $2000 to unlock the steering wheel. Would you fault your friend for breaking the dealer's front teeth ? I wouldn't. Hell I'd bring brass knuckles, fuck that greedy bastard.
As much as it pains me to say this, at some point there needs to be a class-action lawsuit, brought on by tech-savvy lawyers and consumers, to curb this extremely dishonest practice. This excuse of selling a license to a game is absolute bullshit. You buy the thing, it's yours, end of story.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Not to worry, textures and sound effects will always be a free download if you bought the game new.
It works for comic books and graphic novels. Many of them come out monthly or bimonthly, take about 15-30 minutes to read an issue, and have ongoing plot-lines. TV shows takes either 30 or 60 minutes to watch, come out weekly, and many of those (think Lost, 24, Fringe, etc) have ongoing plot-lines.
On a slightly related note, I finished GRR Martin's 4th ASoIaF book in two days, and have been waiting nearly five years for the 5th book. Which was originally the second half of the 4th book, but was split up because of size.
Still waiting, Mr. Martin...
I'm 100% certain this will be abused. First off, TFA states they will offer 10-day trials of this "Premium" content. That right there throws out the argument this is for covering support costs.
Oh. Other juicy bits from TFA:
Hmm, so you have to pay per EA title in addition to Xbox Live to play online? They're profiting from user created content?
Yeah, it's abuse. It's designed that way.
I never really understood why companies like EA didn't just get in on the used game market themselves. Pay a little more for games, sell them a little cheaper. It would drive the brick and mortar used game shops out of business and then they could control the market.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
You might be joking but they do this with textbooks already. The (mandatory) homework problems for my physics textbook last semester were hosted online behind a login which comes with a new book. You're not allowed to transfer the account to anyone else, so if you get the book used you need to also buy an online account to be able to do your homework.
It's ridiculous! Oh, let's jack up the price of textbooks because students have no choice but to buy them from us. What's that, you say students are poor and a used book market has formed? We'd better release a new edition every 2 months and make sure that anyone who buys a book used is appropriately punished! Yep, this will ensure that more Americans can afford an education all right.
I see more and more that the commercial side wants to tighten the grip, and intentionally hobble software for all but the highest bidders.
Meanwhile my software budget decreases out of continued disappointment and frustration.
EA Sports - It's In The Game*
*onetime activation code required.
One thing that really bothers me about this is that it's EA Sports doing it. Sports games are some of the cheapest used games on the market because people quickly replace them with next year's version. I remember picking up a three year old football game for $2. The fact that they're trying to kill this market means those of us who like the games, but don't care about the new roster, suffer.
If you don't want to buy half a book, don't. There are plenty of other great full length books out there.
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
This is already happening with textbooks. Some of them have a one time use access code for a website. The web site has additional things like powerpoint slides, extra materials, etc that all can be put on cd but are not.
Instead of needing to cough up $40 or more for a new game, it lets one pick up a used game and then pay $10 for the extra content. It seems like a reasonable compromise to me, so long as the used game goes for at least $15 less than a new copy.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
Yeah, if you want to see how that thing could actually work, look at the Tempts Fate segment of the Goblins comic (currently on hiatus).
Here's how it goes: At the beginning of the month, the author posts an initial setting comic; at the bottom of the comic are several obstacles that Tempts Fate (the main character) will have to pass. Each obstacle is associated with a donation goal.
When the date of the obstacle rolls around, Tempts Fate will only defeat the obstacle if the goal has been met. How easily Tempts Fate defeats the obstacle depends on how much money over the goal the author has received.
If the donation goal hasn't been met, Tempts Fate will die.
The author initially started this several years ago, probably expecting that Tempts Fate would die in a couple of issues. Right now it's paused because the author has other stuff going on, but so far Tempts Fate has been no less than a little Goblin ninja; the donation goals are almost always exceeded, and sometimes by quite a lot.
If anyone should make money off of a game, it should be the copyright holders. They did all the work and took all the risks creating the game. Gamestop created nothing and deserves nothing. With piracy, the person pirating may or may not have paid for the game so you don't know if the game makers are losing money or not. With used game sales, it's clear that the game makers are losing money because someone is willing to pay for it. Good on EA for finding a legal and effective way to keep Gamestop from siphoning money away from the creators and publishers.
If that's how it "actually works" then it doesn't work. The dude made two grand; The Plant made several hundred thousand and was a failure.
paying $10 EXTRA for a used game? more like rofl
beware he who denies you access to information for in his mind, he already deems himself to be your master (SMAC-ish)
What about when I take a copy of my game to a friends house - am I expected to pay $10 to use the extra features there? What about my second PS3 downstairs? I routinely buy Madden/NHL every Fall, and if this limits me to certain features of the game (notably - roster downloads), then I'm not sure I'd be inclined to buy the game every year.
If you smell what The Ranj is cookin!
console games already have pretty strict DRM, there's absolutely no reason for this other than to screw people who buy/sell games legitimately just because they didn't purchase a new copy.
EA Sports has already been doing this for roster updates, for example NBA Live 2009 contained a card which entitles you to one season of roster updates. If you rent the game, buy used, etc, you would need to purchase the roster updates subscription instead (for $10 or so). If they are also charging for roster updates, renters or purchasers could potentially be hit with even more fees than just the $10 online play fee (not to mention if you have an Xbox 360, Microsoft already charges a monthly fee to play games online in the first place).
Current-year used EA Sports games in stores are typically just $1 to $5 cheaper than new ones (previous year's sports games are virtually worthless used, prices drop to $1.99 after a couple seasons have passed), so the extra fees can make buying used current-year titles much more expensive than buying the game new. EA wins.
Because supporting the free trial would cost, right? Perhaps if everyone signed up for the freebie and nobody bought it ... but in reality that freebie is going to generate some extra sales (that's why they're doing it, dumbass) - and they hope it's enough to cover the extra costs incurred.