EA no longer using Online pass

Well the first sign of the Apocalypse is here ladies and gentlemen. EA is discontinuing one of its many bullshit practices called the online pass.

http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/15/ea-kills-its-controversial-online-pass-program/

Aww more Gamestop

Wow. That's unexpected news. Good on them for killing that nonsense.

i feel a great disturbance in the force

Shocking news.

Everything will be online now.

So why would one need an online pass when you can't play the game without an account anyway?

Huh!. Well shit!.

(I think this is really fucking interesting..)

Guess binding games to accounts is an *Only on Xbox* & *Better with Kinect* thing then? Not that I care, I don't do second hand games.

Well, they won't need the online pass anymore once PS4 and the next Xbox all have built in controls with always online requirements :p

Likely EA is going heavy with microtransaction hooks, so removing borders keeping players from going online and potentially bringing in tons of revenue is in EA's interest.

I guess the supposed success of Mass Effect 3's coop mode and its business model will be the template EA will be going after. Just hope it's going to be more elegant and fair than the flippin' mystery boxes though. Hopefully that means a return to free expansions in the vein of Burnout Paradise, financed by *cool-but-irrelevant* player customization fluff.

Seeing how rare cosmetic stuff goes for hundreds of dollars a pop on Valve's steamworks storefront, and how limited time offers and other rare items sell through like crazy, there's business to be made with fluff.

All right!! I wonder if they took winning " Worst Company " two years in a row to heart.

I'm thinking its more of what @seppli suggested and you're going to see micro transactions in all of their multiplayer games from now on to make up the difference.

Makes sense, yes. There's probably a higher percentage of people that are willing to buy a lockbox or whatever random stuff they sell with microtransactions, than are willing to put another $10 on a game they feel they've already bought (even if used) to be able to play it online.

I DID IT FOR YOU

That's probably right, but I'm trying not be cynical about it.

I rarely buy games used anyway, but this has always been a pretty anti-consumer practise and I'm glad to see it stopped.

Fuck online passes, made renting games pretty unfair for the most part. Especially when renting a fighting game I just wanted to screw around with.

I highly doubt there was enough pushback from the mainstream audience to cause this.

So I'm just going to assume that both PS4 and Xbox^3 are always online. Sure this could be due to an increase in micro transactions but didn't they already state that would be the case going forward when Dead Space 3 came out. Wouldn't they have made this announcement closer to then?

The following day: EA just announced the Super Online Pass. Now you can't even play the single player aspects of used games until you buy their pass. Also it now costs $30.

The future is dark and full of terrors, EA is going to microtransaction all our beloved games and keep twisting my nuts more and more every time I wanna enjoy one of the brands they unfortunately publish.

This is a battle won, but the war is still lost, next gen is gonna fucking suck for anyone interested in EA games. I can only imagine the horrors.

I can only imagine them.

This means we're almost certainly in for something worse.

no

Like others said EA will have micro transactions flying out the ass. That's not even a guess either as EA confirmed micro transactions would be a focus for their next wave of games.

Man, you guys' cynicism keeps me grounded. That said, if EA continues to make good decisions they could definitely win me back to buying their games. Lets hope that there are no ulterior motives at play here.

Oh, there are. They're just exchanging one money-grabbing method for another. Presumably one that they feel will net them more dollars.

it's because they want us to use their microtransactions I guess.

@seppli said:

Maybe it's all this Dota 2 recently but the model of "hey here's a loot box, pay for the key" and other like things are probably going to stick around for a while. That and player-run marketplaces and such where the digital middle man takes a cut on each transaction.

I wonder how successful the program was in terms of both ROI and actually deterring used game sales. As usual that super interesting data is locked behind the proverbial desk at EA :(

Finally, we can get back to using code books that come with the games that give secret passwords required to boot up the game.

Only about three thousand years after we all stopped complaining. That's crappy business logic, they alienated their fans and now they aren't even profiting off it. Still, don't need none of them fancy online codes for PC games.

Anyone that genuinely believes that EA deserved to be crowned "Worst Company in ALL OF AMERICA" - EA, a game developer, is an utter and complete idiot.

The only reason they won two consecutive times was because a small really vocal minority made it so. They definitely were not the worst company in America the last two years. I only meant that maybe they changed their minds about online passes because they did win two years in a row. Most likely though, as of others have pointed out, it's because they plan to monopolize the market in other ways and keeping a paid barrier to their potential online micro transactions is counter productive.

@themanwithnoplan: Sure, just saying anyone that earnestly mentions this worst company thing in a conversation when going on about how EA ruined their lives with micro transactions and online passes is fucking ridiculous.

On the flip side, all these people that are advocates of supporting the developer and fighting big bad corporate entities must have realized that online passes actually incentivized people to purchase games new, in turn helping the developer earn more space bux. It's really fun to watching people go on about how it's such a shame that this and that developer went under and then proclaim how they'll just wait and get the game used for $10 in a few months. But no, everyone should just keep telling themselves it's all EA and Activision's fault that certain games didn't earn enough money because Call of Duty, and microtransactions and rawr rawr.

Good, Now other companies should follow along.

This thread was fine before Alex put up his bit on this, but I don't think it needed to be bumped. To prevent an unnecessary duplicate thread I'm locking this and linking to the main article on it.