INFOtainment

Buying used games? Stay away from EA!

May 12, 2010

57 views

3 min read

Electronic Arts makes some of the best games in the industry today with all of the sports franchises being EA ranging from football, baseball and even golf. Each of these games has a online mode and in the past if you bought these new or used it would be fine and you could still access the content regardless.

That is going to change soon.

Tiger Woods 2011 will be the first title to introduce a feature known as “The Online Pass.” What this does is when you buy the game you get a unique registration number that can only be used once. When that registration code is used it cannot be used again as the system will not recognize it.

So what if you buy the game used and want to unlock the online features of the game? Simply put you have two options. You could either sign up for a seven day free trial to try out all the features that the game has to offer or you can plunk down an additional $10 to get your own online pass.

So let me get this straight.

EA feels that they are not making enough money with the sports franchises so they are going to implement a system saying that if you don't buy the game new and you want to buy the game online you'll have to spend an additional ten bucks to access the online features of the game because you bought it used?

Ok. This has to stop.

There are a lot of people that buy used games today because if you haven't noticed we are in a recession! Not everyone can afford to buy the latest games that are out there and the people that don't and buy games used shouldn't have to suffer!

Now I hear some of you saying “Oh it's just ten bucks. It's not a big deal.” Yeah? Not a big deal? EA is going to do this with each and every one of it's sports franchises branching out into NCAA Football 11, NHL 11, Madden NFL 11, NBA 11, FIFA 11 as well as the EA Sports MMA game.

Now if this is successful what is going to stop them from instituting this on their other games such as the Medal of Honor game that will be released later this year? What would other companies think “Hey this is successful we should institute this policy as well but make it $15!”

The point I am trying to make is that people that buy the games used should not be nickel and dimed to death. Gamestop and other retailers that sell used games do a lot of business this way so why go ahead and deny these people the online experience because they bought it used?

Me personally I don't play a lot of EA games because I am not really into the whole sports franchise and if I was going to play football i'd rather do that outside with my friends. But the legions of fans that are out there that have supported EA thru thick and thin are now getting stuck with this.

Good job EA. You now found another way to screw the customer.

Your thoughts?