The Problem With Online Passes [With So Many Players Having Issues With Online Pass & Publishers Not Doing Anything About It, We Examine What Needs To Change With The Concept Of Online Pass]

Tweet

2009 was a year that changed gaming as we know it. It was in that year, in the month of November, that Electronic Arts integrated Project Ten Dollar into one of its games for the first time. Dragon Age: Origins was the name of the game, and buying a new copy of the game granted you access to some non-essential DLC as well a free (and rather badass-looking) suit of armor for Mass Effect 2 – provided you bought that game new as well.

For those who bought Dragon Age: Origins used, that content was locked, and if you wanted it, you had to shell out some extra cash. Project Ten Dollar’s implementation in Dragon Age: Origins was rather silent and more or less non-intrusive. It wasn’t until the next year, in January of 2010, that BioWare and Electronic Arts made it very publicly known that Project Ten Dollar was going to be included with Mass Effect 2. Once again, Project Ten Dollar’s implementation was pretty much a non-issue – if you bought Mass Effect 2 new, you got free access to a new squadmate, the Firewalker Pack of side missions, and a short (yet rather moving) mission where Commander Shepard explores the crash site of the original Normandy. None of this was essential to the main story in Mass Effect 2, so it really wasn’t that big of a deal.

Fast forward to now, October 2011, and Project Ten Dollar – now dubbed “online pass” by most of the gaming public – has caught on like wildfire. Not only that, but it’s completely changing the way we play video games, and not for the better. Nearly every big-time publisher out there is now using online pass in one form or another, and a fair number of them are screwing it up royally.

Here’s a few examples: when DiRT 3 launched earlier this year, it came complete with an online pass that locked the game’s multiplayer until a code was entered. The only problem was that DiRT 3 launched in the middle of Sony’s hacker debacle with PSN, and even though Sony had managed to restore the online capabilities of PSN by the time DiRT 3 launched, the PlayStation Store was still down for quite some time after the game’s release. This meant that those who bought the game new couldn’t access the game’s multiplayer, and to make matters worse, Codemasters announced that it wouldn’t be releasing a patch to enable the multiplayer mode while everyone waited for the PlayStation Store to return (in other words, it didn’t want to risk the possibility of someone buying the game used and getting online without giving them $10 first).

More recently, we’ve had the disasters with Batman: Arkham City and Battlefield 3. Prior to the launch of Batman: Arkham City, the fine folks at Warner Bros had the brilliant idea of actually locking portions of a single player game and holding it ransom, demanding either the purchase of a new copy or a $10 fee before the content could be unlocked. If you’ve visited any game blog in the past couple of weeks, you know how this turned out: many players discovered that the codes that came with their new copy either didn’t work or were missing entirely. Bravo, Warner Bros!

The same thing happened with Battlefield 3. Many early adopters not only had to deal with server issues, missing squad features, and had to deal with the clusterfuck that is Origin, but a fair number of them can’t even the access the multiplayer, thanks to faulty or non-existent online pass codes.

Now, I’m typically a forgiving man, so let’s pretend that I can look past the fact that Electronic Arts and Warner Bros obviously didn’t care enough to make sure that valid codes were shipping out with every new copy of their games. Even cutting them some slack on that (which I’m not willing to do, but more on that later), the solutions both Warner Bros and Electronic Arts came up with are downright insulting to those who just want to experience the game they paid good money for. When it came to Warner Bros’ attention that some Batman: Arkham City codes weren’t working or missing entirely, it issued a convoluted and entirely unnecessary list of items for players to send in before it would unlock the missing content. Electronic Arts told players to take their games back to the retailers they purchased from, when it wasn’t even the retailers fault in the first place, meaning that most of those retailers probably won’t give a shit (and they shouldn’t).

If anyone from Electronic Arts and Warner Bros happens upon this, I want you to listen to me: this is not how you treat customers that came out to support you on day one. You were the ones that fucked up, and you’re essentially telling your customers “yeah, you got screwed, but we have our money, so you can go piss off.”

In whose world is this an acceptable business practice? Have we really gotten to the point where publishers will implement a system to reward those who purchase a new copy of their game, but then when the publisher takes a shit on their end of the bargain, they aren’t to be held accountable? The sad truth is that yes, we do live in this world – whereas once upon a time, online passes only locked non-essential DLC, they now lock very essential parts of a game. If the code you were supplied doesn’t work, too bad! You’re screwed, unless you want to open that wallet of yours back up.

What boggles my mind – and we’re talking mind boggling to the point where my eyes cross and my speech slurs – is that there are people out there who actually support this bullshit. “Developers need to pay for the server space taken up by used gamers!” they’ll bellow, or they’ll say “Developers and publishers lose money on each and every used sale!” seemingly as if they were one of John Riccitiello’s trained seals.

First of all, while I can concede that it costs developers and publishers a lot of money to set up and maintain multiplayer servers, when someone buys a new copy of a particular game, they are paying for a spot on those servers. When they sell that game, they relinquish their spot on those servers to the person who purchases the game used. The person who bought it new can no longer play online, and the person who buys it used takes the previous person’s spot. Therefore, every spot on those servers has been paid for with a new copy of the game, and you can never have more spots on a server than the number of new copies sold. That would be impossible.

And while it’s true that developers and publishers don’t see any money from used games, I’m not sure they’re losing as much money as we’re led to believe. In fact, I’m willing to argue that they make money on used sales, especially if they’re planning on making a series out of the game in question. If someone buys their games used and enjoys it, they’re more likely to buy the developer’s next game on day one, brand new. I’ve done this many times before – I bought the original Mass Effect used, and I loved it so much that I bought Mass Effect 2 on launch day, along with all of the DLC BioWare later released for the game. I bet you’ve done something like this too, and I’m also willing to bet that you’ve done it more than once. Without the used games market, I can guarantee that I would have never been introduced to the Mass Effect series, I wouldn’t have bought Mass Effect 2, nor would I have Mass Effect 3 pre-ordered right now.

Don’t get me wrong – I think you should support great developers by buying new whenever you can, but I’m also not deluded to the point where I think that this is always possible. The world’s economy is in shambles, and brand new games cost a shit ton of money. Developers and publishers would love nothing more than to see the used games market disappear from the face of the planet, but killing used game sales is a horrifically stupid idea. Not every gamer is rich, and many of them buy new games on day one by trading in old games they don’t play anymore. By implementing online pass, these asshole publishers are driving down the cost of used games, which drives down the cost of trade-in values, thus preventing gamers from being able to trade-in their old games and purchase new ones.

I also call into question the idea that publishers and developers of major game series actually need the money from online pass due to rising production costs, like so many of them have claimed. Let’s look at an example: Uncharted 3 is the first game in the Uncharted series to utilize PSN Pass, Sony’s version of online pass. As of October 11th, Uncharted 2 has sold 4.9 million copies. How much the developers and publishers make off the sale of a new game seems to change rather frequently, but let’s go low and say that Naughty Dog and Sony get to keep $10 of every new game sold. That’s a total of $49 million made off of Uncharted 2 alone. Do you really think they need to demand that extra ten dollars from Uncharted 3 players?

Look, I don’t care if publishers want to reward those who purchase their game new. In fact, I think they should! $50-$60 is a lot of money to spend on a single game, and those that are willing to support the developers by buying new should be shown some appreciation. But if the entire point of online pass is to give people an incentive to buy new, a number of publishers have been doing a terrible job of it lately. If I were considering a purchase of Battlefield 3 right now, I actually think I’d rather wait until the game is available used and just pay the $10 to access the online mode. At least if I did that, I’d have a better chance of the online pass actually working.

At the very least, I’d like to see they publishers admit they screwed up and make the online pass content free while they work out the kinks in their system. The keyword there is “they,” – retailers and consumers shouldn’t be responsible for fixing a publisher’s mistake. I know that online pass will never go away at this point, so I think that publishers owe players that much.

But now it’s time to tell us what you think. Do you agree that there really isn’t any excuse for the issues with online pass that players have been experiencing lately, or do you still think the use of online pass is justified after all of this? Head down to the comments section below and get the conversation going!

Tweet

You may also like:

SSX Online Pass Doesn't Lock Multiplayer Content Entirely...

Some Battlefield 3 Online Passes Aren't Working...

SSX Predictably Gets Online Pass...