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.'"

Comments

Competitive gaming and premium content

[Decollete]

I hope this doesn't end up like those "free-to-play" online games where players can buy "premium content" for in-game advantage

Re:Competitive gaming and premium content

[QuantumLeaper]

I don't think so, it sounds like if you buy a New game you get a 'serial' number for DLC but if you buy a Used games, you have to buy the DLC for $10. It more to kill the used game market since they don't get a cut from it.

Re:Competitive gaming and premium content

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhhhh...

The games companys don't want the market for used games to survive at all..

THATS THE POINT!

Re:Competitive gaming and premium content

[mwvdlee]

I think it'll be more like buy a demo for the price of a full game which then requires the code not just for "premium" content but for "normal" content as well.

cheating the laws

[KiloByte]

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.

Re:cheating the laws

[Zaphod The 42nd]

No. Anybody who buys the game from a vendor, first, gets the code and forever has access to the "service" for free. Anybody who then purchases that title legitimately from that first owner cannot access the same content, content WHICH IS ON THE DISC, not some DLC he "could" download, but actual data and code that is on the physical copy he purchased and is within the game for which the user licence is sold and has been transferred. This is 100% EA locking out people who buy used, and forcing them to pay up to them directly, or to go buy from a vendor and not used. I can't disagree with you more.

Re:cheating the laws

[quantumplacet]

Anybody who then purchases that title legitimately from that first owner cannot access the same content, content WHICH IS ON THE DISC

really, the servers that host online multiplayer games are on the disc? that's an impressive disc.

Re:cheating the laws

[WrongSizeGlass]

By "title updates" they really mean bug-fix patches. In other words, this "Online Pass" thingy is strictly negative.

This will also give EA the option of "discontinuing" this "super duper premium content" that was "soooo hot, and toooo cool" to even put on the game disk. They'll kill off this $10 DLC when the next sequel of their game hits the shelves.

Re:cheating the laws

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm.

With a rather large cut in the middle. Gamespot buys the game for $20 from one user, then sells it to another user at $45. User 1 gets $20 towards a new $50 game, User 2 saves $5, Gamestop makes $25. Game publisher only makes money off User 1.

Game publisher made money from the initial purchase by User 1. I know you don't say that it didn't, but you didn't explicitly list it either, which distorts your figures somewhat.

Game publisher gets:
- $50 for new game, paid by User 1.
- $50 for another new game, again paid by User 1.

Gamestop gets:
- $25 for used game, paid by User 2. ($45-$20)

User 1: Buys two new games with some help from Gamestop and User 2.
User 2: Buys one used game with some help from Gamestop and User 1.

Looks good to me.

Obviously, the publishers would rather User 2 pay $5 more and buy a new copy, which gives them revenue instead of Gamestop.

Not necessarily, since in that case User 1 didn't get any money from Gamestop for their used copy of the first game, thus decreasing the chance of being able to buy new game number two. It might very well end up with still only two new games being sold, one to User 1 and the other to User 2.

What the Game publisher (generic term for most of them, for pedagogic reasons) needs to realize is that new money (to buy games with) won't magically appear just by eliminating Gamestop and its second-hand business.

It's not a linear thing. Psychology must be taken into account.

The best chance for the Game publisher to really maximize sales would come from lower prices. This would a) make more people able to buy the new games in the first place and b) make the second-hand market less appealing, thus redirecting a larger portion of the available money towards the new games.

Combine lower prices (for new games) with less restrictions and hassles (i.e NO DRM OR COPY-PROTECTION SHIT - sorry, I hate them and they don't work) and business could prove to be just fine for the Game publisher.

Some 101 here:
- Make a good product that people want.
- Sell it at an attractive price point.
- Profit. (Note the non-missing ?-step.)

It's really not that hard. You'd think.

Re:cheating the laws

[CaseM]

Moves likes this by major publishers really give me trepidation about what the next console generation is going to look like. I have this sickening feeling that we will actually own nothing. I probably will pass on that even though I own in excess of 200 games for the current console generation.

Re:cheating the laws

[harl]

Exactly.

Say you have $120. Without used you can buy two games. With used you can sell those two games for $40 each and buy another game. That's a 50% increase in sales to EA that used is directly responsible for.

The used people aren't lost sales. They're either frugal or limited income (often children). Either way they're people who aren't going to pay $60 for a game anyways. If there's no used they'll wait until it hits the clearance rack.

I'll save the $10

[mvar]

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..

Re:Hurray, you get to pay for updates

[HungryHobo]

Also- jesus christ.
They're retiring games less than a year old.

In some countries consumer laws would still put electronic good under warranty for that long.

This should be titled

[masterwit]

This article should be titled:

EA games does yet another thing to piss me off...

Re:They're all evil.

[HungryHobo]

They'll attribute any lost sales to piracy whether you pirate or not.

Re:To bring the book industry into the 21st centur

[Zaphod The 42nd]

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!

Re:To bring the book industry into the 21st centur

[Firkragg14]

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.

But these are a good thing

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Re:Hurray, you get to pay for updates

[mwvdlee]

Their attitude is "We're not getting sued, so it must be legal".

Re:To bring the book industry into the 21st centur

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like a normal television show to me.

I read this another way....

[pandrijeczko]

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.

Re:To bring the book industry into the 21st centur

[HungryHobo]

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.

Capitalism

[jlf278]

In capitalism, companies are given a financial incentive to compete for consumers by producing a superior product at a streamlined price. When innovation or increased productivity is no longer forseeable, the mandate for growth costs consumers by giving companies the incentive to create an inferior product.

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.

Better than Steam

[Cookeisparanoid]

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.

Textures and sound effects

[northernfrights]

Not to worry, textures and sound effects will always be a free download if you bought the game new.

Re:Mass Effect 2

[canajin56]

I also like how Mass Effect 2 has a character who sells videogames, used mostly, and laughs about how the developers don't get a cent for their hard work, and he makes a killing! He then offers to sell you a "member card" good for discounts on all your game purchases, "Used only, of course, hahahah!" That's why I vowed to stay clear of Bioware games. If they want to be petty douches, I can be petty too...

Re:Walled Garden

[canajin56]

Umm, the console market was once open. From Atari up until the Genesis and the SNES, third party developers could make games without paying a license fee if they wanted, they just didn't get the API manuals ;) Sega and Nintendo tried to lock them out unsuccessfully, and when they sued, they got thrown out of court. The Sega v. Accolade judge even threatened them with penalties over their abuse of the legal system. Until the DMCA, third-party compatibility was a right! Under the DMCA it's still technically legal to crack an iPad or a Wii or a 360 to run home-brew applications. However, it's highly illegal to describe how to do so. (We're talking you'd get less jail time for stealing an iPad than you'd get for installing your own software on an iPad you bought legally!) What needs to happen is that Nintendo and Apple and Microsoft and Sony need to be totally brutalized legally, they need to be bankrupt over this travesty. Because while not strictly-speaking illegal, they are bundling schemes, and those are anti-trust violations. The quintessential example of an illegal bundling scheme is if Ford tells you you can only put Rand maps in your car, and no other brand of maps. Nintendo is telling you you can only play Nintendo-branded games, Microsoft is telling you you can only play Microsoft-branded games, etc. It's no different. They try to say it's different because it's a technical restriction, not a legal restriction. You're legally free to try to play an unlicensed game, there's no contract they made you agree to. It's just that technically their DRM will not allow it, so "technically" it's a problem with the game, not a restriction they've placed on you. That's bullshit.

Hobbleware is the future, sadly

[Moof123]

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.

Re:Mass Effect 2

[drinkypoo]

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).

Also: Forza 3 came with a card good for one (1) track pack download. EA is behind the times. They're not looking forward, they're looking at Microsoft, and Xbox Live. They want to bring all that to PC gaming. Yuck.