EA *facepalm"

[xg4bx]

http://www.industrygamers.com/news/online-pass-now-required-for-online-gameplay-with-new-ea-sports-games/

 

EA could charge players a one-time fee to be able to play online multiplayer games.  Importantly, EA Sports has confirmed to IndustryGamersthat it means purchasers of used games will now no longer be able to play online, unless they spend the additional $10 for the Online Pass. This goes far beyond what gamers are used to with downloadable content and early incentives for buying new games.

 

What might worry consumers the most though, is that EA has stated that the new pass will even control the ability to play online and in specific matchmaking settings. The website dedicated to the new pass has posted an online question and answer section with Andrew Wilson, Senior Vice President of World Wide Development, in which they describe the purpose of the new system, and exactly what it is capable of doing: ?It?s quite simple ? every game will come with a game-specific, one-time use registration code with each unit sold new at retail.  With your Online Pass, you?ll have access to multiplayer online play, group features like online dynasty and leagues, user created content, and bonus downloadable content for your game including, for example, a new driver in Tiger.?

 

Looking even further into the description of the program, ?we think it?s fair to get paid for the services we provide and to reserve these online services for people who pay EA to access them.  In return, we?ll continue to invest in creating great games and offer industry-leading online services to extend the game experience to everyone.  I don?t think even the harshest cynic can argue with that and instead I think fans will see the value we?re committing to deliver when they see all the services, features and bonus content that is extending the life of their products."Whether or not this holds any repercussions for the future of online play still remains to be seen. On first glance, this is an opportunity for EA to control the ability of gamers to play their games online, regardless of existing services such as Xbox Live.

 

 

 

i give up. *shakes head and dusts off ps2*

[SoulBlazer]

Translation: EA wants to make more money from the sale of their used games, as right now companies don't get squat from the booming second hand/used game scene.

 

As has been talked about in other threads here, it's a bad presicent for the future.

[Albert]

I see myself playing a great deal of older games in the future, instead of the DRM-infested crap companies are festering on gamers.

 

..Al

[Emehr]

Looks like the Wii is the last new console for me. Ah well, there's plenty of gaming goodness left on my plethora of consoles that don't know anything about firmware updates, DRM, DLC, or any of that BS. Way to put another nail in the coffin, EA. This video game crash brought to you by...Electronic Arts. Electronic Arts: figuring out new ways to alienate gamers while maximizing profits.

[Austin]

Agreed wholeheartedly with all the posts above..

 

Awesome thread title, by the way.

[rpgfaker]

Retro systems are looking better and better everyday.

EA! EA!! How many times have I told you not to piss on the carpet *rolls up newspaper*..

[Austin]

Retro systems are looking better and better everyday.

EA! EA!! How many times have I told you not to piss on the carpet *rolls up newspaper*..

 

"rolls up the newspaper"?

 

You need a baseball bat for this one, son!!

 

[HammR25]

Servers cost money. Be happy it's not like World of Warcraft.............yet.

[BDW]

Thanks a lot, EA, for pissing in the ocean of piss that is modern gaming.

[Jess Ragan]

Servers cost money. Be happy it's not like World of Warcraft.............yet.

 

Yes they do. The Xbox Live Gold service is supposed to COVER those costs, though!

 

I understand why Electronic Arts is doing this, and they actually stung me with it when I bought Mass Effect 2. It was actually really dumb for me to purchase this used, because I could have gotten it for the SAME PRICE during the PAX East sale and not had to cough up seven extra dollars for the Cerberus Network. Live and learn, I suppose.

 

This really is the only thing EA can do to discourage used game sales. It's annoying, but it's better than them lobbying to prevent used game sales as Japanese game developers had at the turn of the century. Talk about tyrannical! Could you imagine companies trying to pull that crap here in the States?

[xg4bx]

this hurts the rental market too. i like to gamefly games to test out their online modes so i'm s.o.l. now.

 

i can just see this already "yes ma'am i know you already pay for xbl, but you have to pay an extra $10 for this used game if you want to play online". it's gonna be an absolute shit-storm at retail and online sellers.

 

no more bringing a game over to a friend's house to play online.

 

what if my console breaks? do i need to re-buy one of these tokens or is it tied to the gamer tag?

 

 

 

considering how much ea likes to pull down their servers after like 2 years, do i get my $10 back? i should be able to continue playing madden '11 online 3 years from now then, i'm paying for the damn server.

Edited May 11, 2010 by xg4bx

[Mendon]

Since I don't play many games online, I wonder if EA will do solo-gamers a favor: will they sell two versions of their games, one with an online code and one without the code, and price the non-code version $10 to $15 cheaper than the online-code version????

 

They will now have the capability of doing so and maybe I and others would prefer the $49.99 version of Tiger Woods or Madden!!

 

 

 

Mendon

Edited May 11, 2010 by Mendon

[cimerians]

The list of turds:

 

Activision

EA

Capcom

Scamco\Bandai

 

 

Hmmm....I wonder what other greedy companies will be joining the list. I'm thinking my favorite system this console generation might now be the Wii.

[Albert]

You need to add Ubisoft to that list.

 

..Al

[cimerians]

You need to add Ubisoft to that list.

 

..Al

 

I can't believe I forgot them.

 

Activision

EA

Ubisoft

Capcom

Scamco\Bandai

[Mord]

These things make me glad I still have 15 PS1 rpgs, 10+ PS2 rpgs, and a ton of other games besides that still need to be given the attention they deserve.

[Reaperman]

I don't know about anybody else, but I'm turtling up. My desire to buy games for current consoles is pretty much gone.

It's almost halfway through the year and so far I've bought exactly 1 new game--a discounted psp downloadable title. (not counting the dozens of used vintage games I've bought of course)

 

but

• 
   
  
• I'm not buying downloadables anymore (last year I bought dozens)
  
• I'm not buying psn movies anymore (thank netflix)
  
• I'm not buying dlc anymore, since it's never worth it
  
• I'm not buying modern used titles anymore thanks to EA
  
• I'm not buying a 'collector edition' of anything, since there's nothing of value to collect
  

 

What's happened is that my very soul has limited itself to purchasing the 1-2 games a year that I'm sure are actually worth the full price of admission at launch. I'm down to Modnation racers and Gran turismo 5 this year. Sorry EA.

 

If current gen games become as worthless as old pc games (as I suspect) I wonder if that will raise or lower the value of our collections? Truly collectible games aren't made anymore, but the demand for fully-functional vintage titles them may drop to nothing because of that.

Edited May 11, 2010 by Reaperman

[SoulBlazer]

Yahoo had a short article about this on their front page:

 

http://videogames.yahoo.com/events/plugged-in/how-playing-madden-online-could-cost-you-10/1398633

 

Really, it's not just EA doing this. As the author points out, this is a attack from EVERY GAMING COMPANY on the sale of used games. They don't see one red cent from that and they are trying to make more money by cutting into the booming (by all accounts) game market.

 

I have mixed feelings about this -- I understand where the companies are coming from, but I buy tons of games used, including the NCAA's and Maddens that I enjoy so much.

 

I also don't understand how GameStop can be supporting this. This is going to hurt their bottom line -- along with any other store that buys and sells used games.

 

I still love modern games. I buy downloadable stuff on XBox Live all the time. But between this, the whole DRM crap, and the fact that technology has reached a point where we won't see huge increases in performance anymore, it makes me worried about the future.

[Chickybaby]

Game companies have complained about the Used console game market for a while and Music, Movie, and Game companies have all been looking for a way to profit out of those sales.

I remember many of us here predicting several years ago that more and more fees would be added and people arguing against it, lol - I feel old now.

Tbh, am surprised they haven't done this earlier but just thankful that I am not an online game player nor a parent of a kid who lives for online game playing.

 

I do also think that parents are going to start saying 'no' more and more to cooperative online gameplaying because it seems with all the upgrade costs, charges to be able to play on the various systems servers, and now extra charges when trying to play used games online, each game is costing astronomical amts of money when everything is factored in. Though sports games are cheap enough if you wait till the newst one is realeased, it might be still far cheaper to purchase the year before's and then pay the $10 then buy brand new.

 

It will be interesting how this affects Video game sales - whether people will purchase less games overall, whether there will be a shift to new vs used, whether it will cause used game prices to drop drastically or if people start just staying away from the online play etc.

 

You need to add Ubisoft to that list.

 

..Al

 

I can't believe I forgot them.

 

Activision

EA

Ubisoft

Capcom

Scamco\Bandai

[moycon]

I'm just going to keep buying the games I have fun playing, most of which I could care less if I can take online or not. The day a company forces a consumer to buy a game I'll get pissed. In the mean time I think I'll just keep enjoying my games. I realize most of us are getting old and cranky and our set in our old ways, and that's fine. If change bothers you that much, if you feel you're getting ripped off when you purchases someone current work, there are decades worth of old games to play. My guess is millions of retro console games. Play them. They are readily available, and better they are very cheap. In fact there are millions more you can play free on your PC. There's is zero reason to bitch. You have more alternatives then you will ever be able to play in your lifetime. Take advantage of them and stop stressing. (Remember your blood pressure)

[Jess Ragan]

Yeah, I'm going to have to agree with Moycon on this one. The internet has fostered a miserly attitude among gamers... we've just come to expect everything to be free or unreasonably cheap, while video games are actually really expensive to produce in this day and age. One example: there was a recent sale of six indie games, for any price you cared to pay. People still pirated the software package, even though they could have spent a dollar on it on the official site and owned it legally. Bwa-? I'm not going to rail on piracy, because I've been as guilty of it as anyone, but not everything has to be free. By the same token, game developers don't have to give you the full experience if you stiff them out of a sale. When you buy a used game at GameStop for five dollars less than the retail price, GameStop gets all the profit, and the developer gets nothing. These vouchers (Cerberus Network, etc.) level the playing field a bit, creating a disincentive for purchasing software used. This doesn't really bother me that much; not nearly as much as the short-lived law in Japan that banned used game sales completely.

 

So I guess what I'm trying to say is this: gamers are grossly self-entitled and need to recognize the realities of the free market. If you want to support a game developer that releases software you like, you have to buy it. And if you buy that software used, you shouldn't expect the developer to support you. You're trying to cast Electronic Arts as the villain here, when the truth is that you're acting like self-centered little piggies.

[Lord Helmet]

I'm just going to keep buying the games I have fun playing, most of which I could care less if I can take online or not.

 

Agreed. And I'll still buy downloadable games because they are usually somewhere around ten bucks. Big frikken deal. I go to the moveis and spend more than that for 2 hours of enjoyment. I really don't buy DLC so I could give a crap about that.

[hex65000]

I'm amazed at the comments. It seems at least from the samples I read that EA isn't getting a lot of moral support for this move. That shouldn't shock most of us, but here's the thing. Remember the story about the kid who was taking Gamestop to court over Mass Effect 2? And how it was pretty much the same thing. Some downloadable snippet that he got screwed out of because it was used.

 

What scared me there was all the comments who called the kid an idiot and that he should have bought it new and supported EA.

 

So which is really the face of the modern gamer on the Internet?

 

With the stuff like Capcom's "always on the Internet" requirement and these microtransactions that EA loves so I'm feeling pretty alienated. I admit that I don't know how well I can resist the many shiny things they sell, so we'll see, but right now I definitely feel less compelled to support some of these big publishers and their half-baked turds.

 

That makes me sad because there is a part of me that is excited about "Transformers: War for Cybertron" but it's Activision running that show and it is starting to strike me as a Team Fortress derivative.

 

As far as Gamestop supporting it, most likely they'll keep their crappy prices the same and put up a disclaimer that any D/L content may not be available with their used games. I believe that they work pretty closely with publishers, to keep the hype over the latest and greatest going, good quantity purchase discount prices and the like. To irritate one of the biggest publishers may be unwise for them. So they play yes men, keep turning a profit as long as there is some media to turn in, and they put up a disclaimer. A dollar says that's how this will play out in the short term.

 

The point was made that it's not like we don't have anything to play. This is true. The problem arises with the collector mindset that there must be something to show for your effort in hunting down an item.I'm not sure what the result of total media elimination will result in. It's still too early based on the reception that the PSP GO had, but we (as a collective of gamers) are yet to learn that lesson of when the corp you supported shuts off the spigot you will end up with nothing except that you hope that you can buy it all over again for the generation they are selling you today.

 

I hope that I am wise enough to spot that point and/or jump ship/rebel against a crappy licensing policy.

 

Hex.

[ By reading this post you accept the terms of the license agreement which tells you to start thinking for yourself dammit! ]

[Chickybaby]

Awesome post Hex. I agree about the disclaimer - cheapest and easiest way and I'll say that it will also be included either as a sticker on the case or perhaps at the bottom of a sales receipt.

So many old systems and so many classic awesome games without the new hassles, while so little time.

[akator]

My expectation based on past experiences, media, and economic models, is that for the rest of my life I should be able to continue enjoying the books, music, video, and games that I have legally purchased. As someone basing my expectations on the past, it is natural that I get annoyed when companies take down servers or make other changes that limit my access to material that I legitimately paid for.

 

Many years ago, in an interview George Lucas said he wanted new technology that would force people to pay him every single time they watched one of his movies. He complained that when someone bought a VHS or laserdisc, that was a one time payment and unfair because he should paid for every viewing. While Lucas' dream of micromanaged royalties is not yet a reality, it is within site.

 

I must accept that the business models I am comfortable with are rapidly changing, but that doesn't mean I have to like the changes or that I will enthusiastically adopt them.