EA introduces one-time-use 'Online Pass' for sports games

Isn't this why I pay for Xbox Live in the first place?

The "Just don't buy used" argument is hardly valid, borrow a game off a friend? Oops, no online for you. It's a slippery slope we're on here.

Maybe there are brothers or sisters or parents who play, too? I don't know, that's just my guess. I wouldn't like it if I had a brother or someone playing on my account unlocking my trophies or progressing in my games.

Kotick wouldn't do this.


Just saying.

What about online trophies/achievements? Does that mean if someone wants their platinum or 1000GS, they'll have to buy this or just forget about it? It took me longer than a week to get the $5 million earned in online game modes in Tiger 10. I'm sure not going to pay for this. They can charge for premium crap all they want, but basic online play? Get out of here.

Is this legal?

@link408

Haha...you mean the thing that keeps refilling the ink for their games?

What about a platform game thats good for 3 years with full roster changes? Even if the game was priced at 150 bucks i think people would still pony up the cash.

The shutting down of the servers is the biggest rip off EA has ever done. In all seriousness FIFA 10 was taken off to "make room" for FIFA World Cup...SAME GAME! so that in ultimate team for FIFA 10 you couldn't complete the season...

In comparison it was shutting down Player VS Player during the post-season of MLB.

i never really thought about what happens if more than 1 person is using the console, EA's 10 dollar project is now quite upsetting, but now i dont know who to blame.

The people who buy used, the people who sell used or EA for trying to get a cut of the second hand sales.

And I was actually going to buy Madden for the first time since Madden 07....big mistake EA. I will not buy it now specifically due to this greedy action by EA. EA, you do realize the economy is in the toilet, right? Most of us are having to scrape up the money to buy these games now.

I urge all gamers to much more carefully weigh their buying decisions now as we see more and more just how greedy and disgusting the people running this industry are. They should be offering us more for less right now, but instead they're paying employees less and trying to charge us more.

i'll have no part in this.

This is huge damage not just to game trade stores but rental services like gamefly.This is a joke and ea needs to stop.Money hungrey greedy pieces of poo.

I passionately hate the way EA does business, im sure they have a team of people sitting around thinking of ways to gouge people just a little bit more

Anthony Pittarelli

BAH.

Another scheme to take more money. Good thing I only buy Madden. Looks like thats over too.

What Joystiq haven't mentioned is that this effects not only the second hand market, but anyone who buys games for multiple people (i.e. a dad buys his 2 sons Fifa 11) or people who share games. EA are going down the single user license route.

For example, my housemate buys Tiger Woods 11 brand new. He activates it online, with his XBL/PSN account. If I want to play it online, then I now need to buy a license rather than just throw it into the drive.

Same applies to the father son scenario. Father buys game for kids. Kid 1 activates it and then the father has to buy an additional for Kid 2.


I thought EA were doing well with PR recently. Apparently, they're going back to their odd ways.

What if your hardware goes down and you bought new?

you know, in 3 or 4 years, when you walk into Gamestop, an employee from EA will just be standing inside with a shotgun, LITERALLY robbing everyone who comes in...oh then they'll purchase the term "gimme all your money" and the exclusive rights to the shotgun, you know, so no one else can compete with them...

Bad form, EA. I hope you get some serious backlash on this.

Well I'm done. No more EA, no more Activision. I'll find other publishers to buy from.

BOYCOTT!!!!



Before they do this to other than Sports games.

Want to Play MEDEAL of Honor Online You Must buy it new!!

This problem shouldn't be YOUR problem. Instead of paying $55 for a used game, Gamestop will have to charge $45 and you will pay $10 to EA (or whoever). You still pay the exact same amount you were comfortable paying in the first place. It wouldn't shock me if Gamestop "forgot" to let the used game buyer know and they end up paying more than a new game.

Patience is your friend. Within a few weeks of release, you can buy a BRAND NEW game for $10-$20 off. I bought Left4Dead, Modern Warfare 2, Bioshock 1 and 2, and many others for discounted prices shortly after release. I am sorry if I want the DEVELOPER to get more money. I have no idea if EA is going to give money to the developer, but I can hope they do. EA still has to support their own servers and that does cost money. Match making is not done p2p.

With gaming being the best it has ever been, It isn't hard to let a title slip buy and pick it up on the cheap for $30. I don't have the time to play every game that I want to at release. I have been able to play a lot more games by waiting for them to hit the $30 bin. Usually I buy online games day 1 and play them for hundreds of hours. This is one of the cheapest forms of entertainment there is. Going to the movies, paying for cable, are usually more expensive per hour than gaming.

If I have the option of giving money to the developer and publisher ($60), and giving money to the evil empire of Gamestop ($55), I ALWAYS give my money to the people that deserve it. Gamestop sucks and I only buy from them when they have some pre-order deal that I can't get elsewhere.

Owning both systems I don't pay to play online PS3. EA does have to pay for the entire online experience. I would much rather EA do this than implement a monthly fee themselves, which is probably the alternative. Since this doesn't affect me, this is the better option. Monthly fees would be much worse and I wouldn't be surprised if it comes with the next generation of systems.

This is a repost since I don't want to type again, but:

Corporate executives. Listen up, especially you, EA!

When you sell physical games at retail, it's not a lease agreement. If it were, we would understand if you changed the terms when we went to renew, because it would not be our property. If you wanted to remove or change "other OS" or "online functionality" we wouldn't have any legal say in the matter.

When customers buy games, we want a complete product. It doesn't matter where we get it from. You own the source code, but we own that disc or hardware. You have no say in what we do with it when you exchanged it for our hard earned money. You now have the tools to easily increase profits without adversely affecting customers. Don't want backward compatibility or other OS features? Remove it from future products. If you only want original purchasers to play online? Fine, sell it as download only. That's the only way to get the game, so anyone playing has to buy it.

The moment you do anything else, you are damaging the very product and relationship you are trying to build. When you disable features in rentals and used games, customers don't care why, they only know the game is gimped and that doesn't reflect on them, it reflects on the developer and publisher. And more than likely, it results in a no-sale. Instead of gathering grass roots and word of mouth support for that game and future endeavors, you leave them with cold or lukewarm experiences.

Your job is to create a great experience, something you don't want customer to give up for nostalgia or high replay value. You have the ability to genuinely extend a game's playtime with free and paid DLC. This gives day one buyers and used game buyers the ability to add to their game and your revenue stream. And finally, for all of those without broadband access or people who just bought their shiny new system, you can release GotY versions that are superior to any used versions available.

I have 86 Xbox 360 retail games and over 50 XBLA games. Only 5 or so were used purchases. I'm not even the type of person they are trying to "recoup" profits from with project $10, but they have damaged me all the same. I have decided I will no longer buy any new EA games. After the Mass Effect 2 fiasco with the EA account, wasting precious HDD space for something that should have been on disc, and looking at the direction the publisher's games seem to be traveling, I will part ways with EA now. Maybe.. hopefully.. we will meet again in the future.

Oh god, to all you people complaining, you will all bitch and moan about how terrible EA is as you stand in line to buy their games. Grow a back bone and actually do something about it. You console gamers don't stand for anything but empty space.

I don't see what the fuss is. Its already been established the licence is tied to a single account sharded on whichever machine it is on. If you don't want to pay full price for a for game you can wait and buy it at a used cost. Online play of majority of sports games are at a loss of interest once the new games have released to begin with. Less people will want to play online. What are you going to do when the servers for that year of game are taken down? Are you goingt oto cry then because you 3 or 4 year old version of Madden is no longer supported? No more updates? How can you really complain about losing content when you didn't pay for it to begin with? The developers aren't making the money from the resale. They got their piece on the original. If you want to wait for bargain bin pricing you obviously didni't think the game was good enough to pay full price for. Those people that did pay for it get the full benenfit. At a $5 difference I'd rather have a new copy of something anyway. Would I pay the $10? No. I wouldn't buy an outdated sports game. Whats the point? If you don't like the game, buy it. If you want to play online with others in the present, buy it new. If you want to wait a year and play last seasons outdated version for what ever reason, know you're paying less for the product but expect to pay a premium for supporting old software.

I used to think EA was great. I gave up when (a long time ago) Nascar Simracing for PC, was broken out of the box and they refused to patch it. Well they gave us one patch that made it so you could play single player(turned of the black flag rules).The community tried, pleaded, nothing. Honestly I do not go around carping about EA all the time, I just dont give them any more money. I would love to play Bad company 2 with my friend but I will not give EA another penny. Like the guy above said they got their cut when they sold it new, this is akin to Chevy wanting some money when you sell your Cobalt, so you can use the airbags.
With EA getting to be bigger douche bags every day, at some point the momentum will shift and people will show them what they think of all this.

This is a bad precedent that will likely lower the number of online players. It'll hurt the used and rental markets. I was never a fan of having to log into EA again after having logged into say-- Xbox Live. I thought it was stupid, but now I can see where they were headed with that one.

Um...wow. Here I thought EA was starting to turn around, what with Activision claiming the crown of douchebaggery, but this is some pretty serious BS.

What EA has forgot, alot of people buy new games knowing that once they get bored with it, they can sell it on or trade it in towards another game, people will not want to buy something like Tiger Woods 2011 for £45 when they know it will have no resale value, EA thinks they are forcing people to buy NEW but infact what they are doing is the opposite, people will just buy the game pre-owned and pay $10 for the code.

I will never buy another EA Sport game full price, knowing that if I got bored with it two weeks later, there would be no way of me selling it for close what I paid for it.