EA Sports to charge for multiplayer access on second-hand games

$10 is a trivial amount really, and unless you are really playing lots o EA games online all at the same time I can't see it amounting to much.

its just another EA cash cow scam...

I'm reminded of the last panel from this strip:

Penny Arcade! - Reading Between The Lines

Still better than steams really...at least here you can sell your games or buy them second hand and get on cheaper. Granted steam has a billion things that make it better but in this regard its not.

- Why EA Thinks ‘Online Pass’ Plan Is Good For You (And EA) | Kotaku Australia
- News: 'Pre-owned games worse than piracy' - ComputerAndVideoGames.com

only games i've ever sold have been console ones - can't see the point of selling PC games: never know when there's going to be a mod released that completely refreshes that game you finished 5 years ago.

lol pay $10, then find out they have killed the servers in 6months time.

oh shit no. $10 for 6 months of enjoyment. what terrible value for money.

It is when you have already paid for a live subscription.
It also gets a bit of a joke when you buy a game and servers are shut down for it in the same year.
I've had to return a few fairly recent preowned and new EA games because the multiplayer aspect has been shut down.

This is another case of the Intellectual Property Concept getting out of hand. You produce goods to sell once the good is sold you get your money the good is no longer yours. You do not sell a farmer a cow and then expect him to pay you every time it produces milk do you?

actually, they should just entirely decouple the multi player aspect, make their games $XX cheaper, and charge $XX for the MP access.

Originally Posted by r00t|{it

This is another case of the Intellectual Property Concept getting out of hand. You produce goods to sell once the good is sold you get your money the good is no longer yours. You do not sell a farmer a cow and then expect him to pay you every time it produces milk do you?

Now that these developers/publishers have their own networks established for match-making and content serving through games directly (outside of platforms such as Xbox LIVE/PlayStation Network), they're actually providing a service above and beyond the product itself. At least, that's what how they'd argue it.

Originally Posted by r00t|{it

This is another case of the Intellectual Property Concept getting out of hand. You produce goods to sell once the good is sold you get your money the good is no longer yours. You do not sell a farmer a cow and then expect him to pay you every time it produces milk do you?

No, but if I sold a farmer a cow and he used my milking equipment to milk it you bet your arse I'd charge him for it.

No, but if I sold a farmer a cow and he used my milking equipment to milk it you bet your arse I'd charge him for it.

Hardly fair if you take away his ability to milk it himself in the first place? While trying to avoid sounding paranoid (probably not going to happen) I think this has been a plan coming for a while as newer games are becoming less LAN friendly forcing people to either jump online or just play with themselves. While they may use high speed internet as a reason for doing this I have no doubt that somewhere someone was just waiting to pull this kind of stunt.

I don't know...."Make it harder to play LAN games so if someone resells on a second hand copy of a game and that person wants to play online we can charge them a small fee" sounds a bit, well, convoluted and far fetched. I seriously doubt they'd intentionally make a new release game harder to play just so they can make a couple of dollars on the few people who buy it second hand and then the even fewer of those who want to play it online.