Why the “Online Pass” in Videogames is a Terrible, Terrible Idea

Fitting that this will be the first post after PAX East.

There’s been a couple of announcements recently that are pointing toward an alarming trend. EA announced last week that starting with Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2011, all EA sports games would ship with a code inside the box that grants access to the “Online Pass” for that game. Once the user entered that code, they’d have access to some premium downloadable or online content that would be released by the publisher.

Oh right, and they could play online multiplayer.

No big deal, right? It’s in the box, everyone gets one when they buy a (new) copy of the game. Oh, you bought a used copy from Gamestop, Glyde or Amazon? No code? Well, you can buy a code for $10. Everyone’s happy!

I disagree.

Here’s a little story. The first videogame I remember buying for myself was a tiny little game called Half-Life, which came out in 1998. If you’ve played videogames at all in the last decade, you probably know what Half-Life is, and you know what it (and publisher Valve Software) has become. I bought Half-Life cause it looked cool. I was 14. I was correct. It was cool. One of the best things about Half-Life was the multiplayer system. It worked out of the box better than any other I’d seen, and probably beats most systems to come out since. Further proof of that is that Valve hasn’t really changed their matchmaking system since then. It just worked, it worked well, and that’s all there is to it.

It was also free.

Well, as free as something can be when it’s part of a $40 purchase. Bottom line is that once I got the game, so long as I had an internet connection, I was good to go. All the features of the game were there, unlocked and ready to go. I bought Half-Life new, but I bet it would have worked that way if I’d gone into Gamestop or EB Games and bought a used copy as well.

Fast forward to 2010, and that system – one that you pay one price for a product, and that product belongs to you – seems to be falling apart a little. EA’s announcement; THQ announced the same thing for UFC Undisputed 2010; Ubisoft, already making friends for their restrictive PC DRM that forces you to be connected to the internet while you play Assassin’s Creed II (if your connection to their DRM-approval server drops, you get booted out of the game), is talking about their own online pass program.

All of these – every single one – is a way to squeeze a bit more money out of your customer base. And in an industry where the price of a game has jumped by $10 with every new console generation, that’s not cool.

I bought a used copy of Mass Effect 2 through glyde.com. I knew when I bought a used copy that I wasn’t going to have access to the Cerberus Network, EA’s built-in news feed, without coughing up some more money. That was a little disappointing, because I knew they would be sending out some free content to subscribers, running some contests and whatnot, but that’s not why I bought the game. I bought it to play Mass Effect 2, in its entirety, as shipped, and I could do that without the Cerberus Network. Am I missing anything by not having that access? Maybe. But I bet if they put out something mind-blowing, I’m going to hear about it, and that might be enough to get me to cough up ten more dollars.

EA’s Online Pass and other similar programs handicap used games from the very start, especially when you’re talking about sports games. I buy sports games to play single-player franchise modes, but I’m in the minority – most people buy sports games to play online with their friends. So now, if someone’s trying to save a few bucks by buying a game used, they can’t use a feature that has been part of the gaming industry since the late 70s?

How do you get this message to parents buying the next Madden game for their kid, and see this used copy over here, which looks exactly the same as the one over there, only this one is five bucks less? They bring it home, the kid pops it in, and suddenly he’s disappointed with a gift because he can’t get online. In fact, in order to get online, the game is now going to cost more than the new copy.

I started getting a little worried a couple months ago, because there was (and still is) a growing trend of games that are offering release-date DLC. If you have this extra content ready for the day the game is released, why isn’t it just on the disc, part of the game? At least a good number of these publishers have the common sense and decency to make release-date DLC free. But just like online pass programs, what it points to is a new fragmenting of content. It’s the ugly stepsister of the microtransaction model that Facebook games are making enormous right now. Why package everything into a game – every feature, every outfit, every mission, every team, etc – when you can put the bare minimum in and then charge a little extra for everything else?!? IT’S GENIUS! SELL PARTIAL GAMES FOR FULL RETAIL PRICE, AND THEN STUFF WALLETS EVEN MORE WHEN PEOPLE COME LOOKING FOR THE REST OF THE GAMES!

I understand the copyright argument, I do. And I know game-related piracy have made the gaming community a little more difficult to trust. But this isn’t the way to regain that trust. Remember, EA/THQ/Ubisoft, you’re the big scary company, and we’re the tiny little gamers. I don’t think it’s unfair to say that you ought to be the ones taking the first step.

There are ways to convince us to buy new games that don’t involve punishing us when we don’t do it. And you’re already doing them! When I preordered Red Dead Redemption on Amazon last week, there was a promotion where Amazon would send me a code that would be redeemed in game that would give me a set of golden guns that only Amazon customers would get. I know Gamestop had a similar promotion. A reward for buying new? Cool!

It’s value-adding for loyalty, not restriction for frugality. The issue a lot of publishers have (though you’ll never hear them say it) is that they get a cut of every new game sold through the game retailers. Not true for every used game. They see none of that cash. And Gamestop puts out some pretty nice numbers for their used game sales. Can you blame them for wanting a piece of that action? But if the problem is that the retailers are selling your products without giving you a cut, it seems to me that that is something you might want to work out with the resellers, not take out on your customers.

Besides, even if the publishers aren’t seeing money from the used game transactions, it’s still potentially very helpful to them. After I bought my 360, I bought a used copy of Assassin’s Creed from Gamestop. Ubisoft saw none of that money. But you know what I did a year later? I walked into Best Buy and bought Assassin’s Creed II the day it came out. Cause the first game had made me a fan. By punishing used game buyers, you’re potentially stunting your fanbase growth. If the kid who buys Madden 11 used can’t play online, and loses interest in the game because he doesn’t want to spend the ten extra bucks for a basic feature, how likely is he going to be to pick up a new copy of Madden 12? Or what if that same kid decides he doesn’t mind being without multiplayer, and decides to buy Madden 12 used as well, because he doesn’t need that feature that has suddenly become an extra, not a basic reason to buy the game.

Bottom line, I’m concerned about the idea of breaking games into pay-by-the-feature. If that were going to go the way of paying $40 for a game with no multiplayer, and $60 for the full game, that’s fine. But it won’t. It will keep games at $60, and then another $10 for multiplayer. It’s a slippery slope, and one I’d rather the industry not start heading down.

PS - another excellent side note raised by the guys over at IGN Game Scoop is that if you own an Xbox 360, you may very well already pay a premium for online contest in the form of Xbox Live. I know it's different companies, and technically a different service, but that feels an awful lot like double-dipping to me.