What's a real world problem with online passes?

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allgamelover

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#1  Edited By allgamelover

Well I am very annoyed at the moment. I just realized that if I buy Battlefield 3 on the PS3, for both me and my brother to have separate online progression we will need to pay for an online pass. That's for me and him to play on the same console, same room, etc. but at different times. People are part of families, with other members who also play games. Even more concerning is the single player online pass seen recently in Batman Arkham City. How crazy is it that I want to have my own save file and progress on my PSN ID and my brother would have his own, without having to select some file in game, not that all games have multiple save slots. THAT IS INSANE! To think we can't share the copy. Multiplayer or single player, being part of a family, and also what with the price of games, you can't expect me to have two or more copies of a game in a house, especially single player games. Why should all families be miles apart and be playing online. I'm not alone at home, me and my brother both play games. If I want to play with or against him, yea some games merit two copies but this is insane.

I'm just really annoyed to think that gaming came to this.

What are your real world problems with online passes? Am I such a minority? Anyway, feel free to let out some steam 'cause man, this is unacceptable for me.

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zeforgotten

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#2  Edited By zeforgotten

I got no problems at all with online passes, not in the fake world or the real world.

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CastroCasper

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#3  Edited By CastroCasper

Wow that is kind of crazy. I figure that they want each copy of the game to have a uniqe user or whatever, but you have to buy 2 passes, for one disc? That is silly, but probably some measure put in so you can't just trade the game in, or around your circle of friends.

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kishan6

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#4  Edited By kishan6

@ZeForgotten said:

I got no problems at all with online passes, not in the fake world or the real world.

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mosespippy

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#5  Edited By mosespippy

I know one person who will need 5 passes for Starhawk. I feel bad for her. Another problem with online passes is stuff like Catwoman in Batman: AC. For the millions of people who aren't connected to the internet the game they buy is missing single player components that they paid for and can't access.

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RE_Player1

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#6  Edited By RE_Player1

I can see it sucks for people who share consoles but for me I am the only person who plays the PS3 in my household, the odd time my brother will have the urge to play I'll hand him a random single player game like Batman AA or Mirror's Edge.

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allgamelover

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#7  Edited By allgamelover

I guess most Giant Bomb users are the only gamers in their homes. Not really surprised about that though. But you all should be worried about this, if the big guys keep getting away with these tactics, they will only feel more powerful and who knows what else they might implement.

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Karl_Boss

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#8  Edited By Karl_Boss

Online passes are brilliant from a business perspective.

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tourgen

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#9  Edited By tourgen

@Unknown_Pleasures said:

Online passes are brilliant from a business perspective.

I think that's only, at best, true in the short term.

I think it is not good for the long-term health of the industry. Typically this is true for any industry. Wide-scale abuse of the customer will eventually have consequences.

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brownsfantb

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#10  Edited By brownsfantb

Yeah it's total crap, thankfully me and my brother don't really play the same games online. Gears is really the only one and it doesn't have an online pass. Also, my brother plays more on PS3 and I play more on the 360.

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kingzetta

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#11  Edited By kingzetta
@tourgen said:

@Unknown_Pleasures said:

Online passes are brilliant from a business perspective.

I think that's only, at best, true in the short term.

I think it is not good for the long-term health of the industry. Typically this is true for any industry. Wide-scale abuse of the customer will eventually have consequences.

I don't know how it's Wide-scale abuse of customers. I can see how it's abuse of gamestop customers.
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gamer_152

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#12  Edited By gamer_152  Moderator

I don't really know where to draw the line between real-world and virtual problems with online passes, but I think you've pointed out a very big problem with the one account-one pass type of system that a lot of people don't usually bring up. I guess my "real world problem" with online passes is that I have very little money to spend on games so I either get a very small number of new games a year with their online pass intact or get a few more but don't get to play them online.

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Karl_Boss

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#13  Edited By Karl_Boss

@tourgen: A lot of people complain about online passes but I hardly ever see anyone complain about on-disc DLC....on-disc DLC pisses me off a lot more than online passes do.

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#14  Edited By SuperCycle

I was under the impression that multiple accounts shared dlc on the same console for ps3, I don't know why that would be different for online passes. I have my friends login and was able to download undead nightmare and dragon age dlc, and he was able to get the catwoman and crysis from me.

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allgamelover

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#15  Edited By allgamelover

@kingzetta said:

@tourgen said:

@Unknown_Pleasures said:

Online passes are brilliant from a business perspective.

I think that's only, at best, true in the short term.

I think it is not good for the long-term health of the industry. Typically this is true for any industry. Wide-scale abuse of the customer will eventually have consequences.

I don't know how it's Wide-scale abuse of customers. I can see how it's abuse of gamestop customers.

Well I feel ripped off by this, and I'm not a GameStop customer.

@SuperCycle said:

I was under the impression that multiple accounts shared dlc on the same console for ps3, I don't know why that would be different for online passes. I have my friends login and was able to download undead nightmare and dragon age dlc, and he was able to get the catwoman and crysis from me.

I don't know if that is the case, but then I guess it would work fine then. Although I would have thought its linked to an account, the same way you buy it from the PSN store, and it's not a "game" but some kind of account pass for online. I thought it would be linked to the account and checked when you go online. Regardless, it still sort of sucks. This being such a major release, and EA wanting to topple COD, they should have held off on this dumb pass. If more and more people play online, whether new or used, it would bring a bigger crowd in the long run. Some poeple must have played COD used back in COD4, and when MW2 came, maybe they couldnt wait for used, and got new copies.

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SuperCycle

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#16  Edited By SuperCycle

You'll have to have your brothers account on your machine, and you can't delete the account. I remember that I was also able to get my friends Cerberus code for ME2. If it's the same console and he's already downloaded it, just try starting the game and see if you can. If you have separate consoles log into his account, start the download and then log into your account, it works for me.

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allgamelover

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#17  Edited By allgamelover

@SuperCycle: Okay, I know the case is true for games, I've done that before, I thought the pass was not treated as a game. Thanks for the tip though, if I get the game, or future games I'll be sure to keep that in mind. It never occurred to me that it might work for passes as well.

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kingzetta

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#18  Edited By kingzetta
@allgamelover said:

@kingzetta said:

@tourgen said:

@Unknown_Pleasures said:

Online passes are brilliant from a business perspective.

I think that's only, at best, true in the short term.

I think it is not good for the long-term health of the industry. Typically this is true for any industry. Wide-scale abuse of the customer will eventually have consequences.

I don't know how it's Wide-scale abuse of customers. I can see how it's abuse of gamestop customers.

Well I feel ripped off by this, and I'm not a GameStop customer.


If your buying the game new and have the internet, there should be no problem. I think your problem is more with local mulitplayer not being a thing anymore.
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allgamelover

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#19  Edited By allgamelover

@kingzetta: It's not local multiplayer, it's me wanting to play BF3 online as my own soldier with separate progression on one psn account, and my brother also wanting his own separate progression on a different psn account, both on one ps3. I know about local multiplayer, and that's fine, either way split screen is hard nowadays, I want all the screen for myself. Just like levelling up in COD online, and unlocking the guns etc. You need two XBL or PSN accounts because games usually only have one online progression per account. So with the online pass, it would limit that to one account. Another user above (SuperCycle) mentioned that the pass may be per local ps3 machine, which would then make the pass somewhat fine. Either way, don't give in to corporations' requests so easily, we don't want to give them all the control. Look at all the nonsense we have now taken from companies: day one dlc, on disc dlc, online passes, awful/buggy game launches, and some more I myself might have forgotten. We're just taking it as standard now, but some of it is more damaging to consumers than we realize. You see, this does not affect you at all, so you can't possibly see a downside, but just giving EA and Ubisoft and others the power is wrong.

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SeriouslyNow

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#20  Edited By SeriouslyNow
@tourgen said:

@Unknown_Pleasures said:

Online passes are brilliant from a business perspective.

I think that's only, at best, true in the short term.

I think it is not good for the long-term health of the industry. Typically this is true for any industry. Wide-scale abuse of the customer will eventually have consequences.

Basically this.  Online passes only work when the companies which put them into play are being fair to their end users.  Years ago Ford and Mazda lost whole swathes of fleet deals because they charged too much for forced service contracts only offered from authorised repair centres.  Indeed it was this failure aided led to the growth of the Korean car industry in many Western countries.
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#21  Edited By ch13696

It doesn't affect me in any way because my consoles aren't connected online. I haven't connected them since January of this year. However, when it comes to always-online DRM, then that's where I draw the line. Blizzard, Ubisoft, and EA are guilty of stuff like this. Well, I'm not 100% sure of Ubisoft because of their update with Assassin's Creed II, but from what I'm hearing, they're still using this DRM for future titles. Which is ridiculous to me because these games all have single player components.

And I feel for the people that don't always have an internet connection. In my case, I'm in the same boat. There's times that I can't afford to keep my internet on and there's times where Time Warner has to do some kind of maintenance (which it seems pretty frequent in my area). I've tried searching for other options, but it's either stick with Time Warner or jump down to a 1.5Mb/s DSL connection. So, the only way I can play these games on PC is if I do purchase them and use a crack so that way I'm offline. I know none of the companies will like it, but that's just the way it is.

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iam3green

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#22  Edited By iam3green

while, yes that does suck. i do hate DRM, it's pretty much what it is. i'm sure you can't find a way like a cd generator that can just make one.

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JammyJesus

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#23  Edited By JammyJesus

Real world problems.

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#24  Edited By N7

Me and my uncle often split the price for new games, so only one of us can have an online pass. I let him have it and then gameshare it off of his account later on. I figure, I paid for it, so everything is cool.
 
But you can't do that on the same console. :(
 
What I don't get, is when you game share from a different PS3, you can use that content on every profile you have. But when you download it on one account, you can't play it on any other accounts on that PS3.
 
What matters about that to even cause such a problem is what I want to know.

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#25  Edited By Azteck

I'd understand locking the game to a specific console far more than a single user. Surely they had to foresee this exact problem occurring or their market research (if they did any) was completely off. Either way, it's bullshit that thy go to these lengths to just to stop used game sales. The fact that they are so willing to screw over their buyers so badly to stop pirates and such is crazy, especially when you consider the fact that the people pirating it rarely get affected by it!

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#26  Edited By Detrian
@allgamelover said:

Well I am very annoyed at the moment. I just realized that if I buy Battlefield 3 on the PS3, for both me and my brother to have separate online progression we will need to pay for an online pass. That's for me and him to play on the same console, same room, etc. but at different times. People are part of families, with other members who also play games. Even more concerning is the single player online pass seen recently in Batman Arkham City. How crazy is it that I want to have my own save file and progress on my PSN ID and my brother would have his own, without having to select some file in game, not that all games have multiple save slots. THAT IS INSANE! To think we can't share the copy. Multiplayer or single player, being part of a family, and also what with the price of games, you can't expect me to have two or more copies of a game in a house, especially single player games. Why should all families be miles apart and be playing online. I'm not alone at home, me and my brother both play games. If I want to play with or against him, yea some games merit two copies but this is insane.

I'm just really annoyed to think that gaming came to this.

What are your real world problems with online passes? Am I such a minority? Anyway, feel free to let out some steam 'cause man, this is unacceptable for me.

That's not a problem with online passes though. You have the same thing with Xbox live accounts and we've let it happen for what? 6 years?
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lockwoodx

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#27  Edited By lockwoodx

Why stop at online passes? You should have bar codes tatooed to your body so they can verify your bank account err identity.

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#28  Edited By Marcsman

Doesn't bother me. I never buy used games.

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LordXavierBritish

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This is just another problem that can be solved by not giving EA money in the first place.

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#30  Edited By Chummy8

Letting your brother play a game that you paid for is piracy.

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#31  Edited By allgamelover

@Detrian: Yes, but that's why I want to get it on the PS3, no payment for online. And I have things to say about the 360, which is why I have 2 PS3s and only one Xbox. The online pass would limit online progress to only one account. Normally on the PS3, I can buy one copy of a game, and just have many accounts running multiplayer with their separate progression. I'll be honest, long ago I would play different COD accounts on separate PSN IDs, cause I wanted to be the "new" guy who was really good. So it still is an online pass problem because I want both my brother and I to use one game copy to play online at different times, and different online IDs.

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allgamelover

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#32  Edited By allgamelover

@TekZero: Haha, what? In the same house and the same PS3 man. Whatever, either you didn't read my comment, or I didn't understand yours. It must be a joke.

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#33  Edited By Chummy8

@allgamelover: Just joking. I could see EA implementing the passes to prevent people from pirating the game like this, but it affects people living in the same house.

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I was worried about this when VIP code was introduced in BC2, but luckily that was tied to the console not the gamertag. This is yet another reason to hate EA, bastards!