June 1, 2012
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6.1/2012
There's a current trend in gaming that pisses me off: the idea of "online passes." I understand that game companies want to make money off of new-game sales, and that some people are so eager to play online that they'll actually pay for it, given they already bought the game, but this is horribly wrong. It shouldn't matter whether I buy a game brand spanking new or used. Given I'm not playing a MMORPG, the online part of the game is part of its content. It's like buying a DVD used and having to pay extra for the deleted scenes that the primary buyer already watched.
The reason I'm so heated about this is because of recent purchases. I bought a decent amount of games recently, since I cannot play while in school, and some of the games (Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, Madden 11, Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, etc.) actually have the online pass feature. To add insult to injury, all of the passes have been used... even those that I bought from GameFly... which doesn't seem to make much sense, since I didn't think that they sent people the game boxes or the online pass code when people rented their games. (I could be wrong though. I've never actually been a GameFly customer.
To me, it seems as if game companies are attempting to undermine the used-game sales industry, by promoting players to buy new games in order to avoid paying for an online pass. It seems strange to me that certain companies would be okay with charging money for something that has always been "free" ( given you have a xbox live subscription... or a PS3). Certain companies in the gaming industry are warring with the used-game industry, and gamers, I think, suffer the, perhaps, unintended collateral damage.
I'm looking at you, EA.
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