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EA Charging 2nd Hand Buyers to Play Online

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EAWood11

By now you’ve likely heard that EA, in an attempt to curb 2nd hand sales of their games, will be charging 2nd hand purchasers a surplus to utilise online features.

While they’ve used incentives to elicit new purchases in the past with games like Mass Effect 2 and its Cerberus network and Battlefield Bad Company 2, when it comes to their sports franchises, it’s a whole different ball game.

Starting in June with Tiger Woods 11, new copies of EA Sports titles will include an online pass. This pass entitles you to utilise online features such as access to additional content – free or otherwise – as well as rudimentary stuff like playing online. For 2nd hand buyers you’ll have to shell out an extra $10 dollars for the privilege. According to the official Online Pass web site, Madden NFL 11, EA Sports MMA, FIFA 11, NBA Live 11, NFL 11, and NCAA Football 11 will use the same incentive scheme.

This will obviously have a pretty large impact on the market in used sports titles – sellers will have to reduce their asking price as they’ll essentially be selling a gimped version of the product, and buyers will have to be aware that they’ll have to pay extra to play online.

Thankfully for those people, and those that rent games EA are generous enough to give you a 7 day trial of the online features.

“This is an important inflection point in our business because it allows us to accelerate our commitment to enhance premium online services to the entire robust EA SPORTS online community,” says Peter Moore.

Which seems to be PR for “WE LIKE MONEY!”

What do you fine folks think? Is this a justified move on the part of EA, who traditionally don’t make a cent on the sale of used games, or does it just seem like a bit of a cash grab?

Source : EA Online Pass

Last Updated: May 12, 2010

7 Comments

  1. koldFU5iON

    May 12, 2010 at 10:05

    Well I’m looking at it from the side of EA, when you buy the game new you are paying for the game + the online component and it’s features, a portion of that titles cost goes to maintaining those servers. when a game is re-sold none of that revenue comes back to EA hence they now have a “free loader” on their servers which EA has to cover the costs for. While it does bug me that such a system would be put in place … it is in retrospect “fair”

    Reply

    • Someone

      May 12, 2010 at 10:17

      OK I see where you come from.
      But the Person who sold the game no longer makes use of the servers or online content.
      So they scoring again.

      Reply

      • RSA-Ace

        May 12, 2010 at 10:33

        I was going to say the same thing. The original owner is passing his ability to play online to you (he can’t play it anymore).

        But another argument would be that the original owner has made use of the servers for a length of time and thus the company has incurred fees because of that.

        Now the problem I see is the fact that EA are in the practice of shutting down online servers once games get old… If they did implement that then they should have to guarantee that the servers will be online ‘forever’.

        Reply

      • koldFU5iON

        May 12, 2010 at 11:02

        Good point I did overlook that

        Reply

  2. Arc316

    May 12, 2010 at 10:33

    This is such BS! I can think of any other product in the world where second hand sales involves the manufacturer. Why should games be different?

    Cash converters will have a hell of a time convincing people everything a customer buys there, they have to pay extra money to the original manufacturer.

    What about car manufactures? They get noting extra from a second hand sale even if the car has a maintenance plan.

    It is idiotic greedy things like these that promote piracy.

    Reply

    • koldFU5iON

      May 12, 2010 at 11:09

      Well it all depends if you’re using cars as an example then most cars will come with an extended warrantee plan that is purchased by the manufacturer, also note that money is being injected back to the manufacturer on some of these trade-in’s i.e. BMW/VW/JEEP all have their own pre-owned markets where they can still gain profit and increase value at no cost to the company.

      I think the point is that cash converters (or any retailer) has no say in this, and already probably have a disclaimer stating that you understand that the product you are purchasing in it’s current condition is your own responsibility.

      Also while the game itself is second hand the “condition” of the servers is still being updated and maintained for optimal playability, you are essentially paying for a service, much like Xbox Live, and most MMO’s

      Reply

  3. Milesh Bhana

    May 12, 2010 at 12:20

    currently, 2nd hand game traders won’t even touch an EA sports game if the next iteration is already out. So i can’t see them losing much. (they already learnt the hard way that).

    I’m just worried that in SA, if EA ever follows suit and starts removing XBL codes from the boxes, that will be a huge bummer. I doubt that EA SA is that dumb though, but you never know…

    Reply

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