EA to Charge You $10 to Play Used Sports Online

[Guest]

[citation][nom]gm0n3y[/nom]Why should publishers make money on second hand games? Do you think car manufacturers should make money on used car sales? Or what about housing sales, should the original builder get a cut of every resale?[/citation]

Check and mate. +1 for you sir.

 

[chrisv815]

no more EA games for me I guess.

 

[rooket]

Hand it to EA to be the first to add some bull$hit to games that will piss off the gaming community. Nice work guys

Steam is bad enough where even if you own the original disc, you can't sell the game.

 

[gm0n3y]

[citation][nom]rooket[/nom]team is bad enough where even if you own the original disc, you can't sell the game.[/citation]

Can't you 'gift' games to other accounts on Steam? You could potentially sell them like this.

I've personally never sold a game. I don't buy (many) console games and the PC games I buy I generally want to keep (can you even sell used PC games?).

 

[mdillenbeck]

So much to respond to...

[citation][nom]gho16[/nom]Kelavarus, nor SHOULD the publishers receive anything from a 2nd hand sale. . . . As others have said, you wouldn't expect your car dealership to get anything if you sold your used car.[/citation]

What is your view of the very successful MMORPG business model? After all, you buy a software package that is useless unless you pay $10 a month! EA could easily argue they are being quite generous for allowing online content for a mere $100 a lifetime instead.

(This question goes out to all outraged against EA - specifically, why do you view the business models so differently?)

[citation][nom]LLJones[/nom]Can you imagine if the auto manufactures implemented this idea. . .[/citation]

When I sell the car, can I still have a version of it in my garage? A usable version? Can I crack it and give all my friends copies of my car?

As has already been argued, there is a difference between digital/virtual products and tangible/real goods. This is why so many of us want to see intellectual property laws changed - but this is an up and down stream sort of thing. It means we cannot draw valid analogies between the goods because they are different, so the car one doesn't hold water.

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[citation][nom]invlem[/nom]One can only hope this will knock $10 of the gamestop used pricing scheme. You know, instead of charging $45 for a $50 retail game, they might charge only $35...[/citation]

Probably. However, the way the used market works means that the game will fall significantly in resale value also. This translates to higher cost to purchase for the initial buyer due to lower expected resale value.

Will EA stop selling? I think they have cornered the market on licensed sports franchises, and seeing how we in the US seem to value sports above all else that means people will keep buying no matter what. They keep buying/pirating RIAA music as well as gas-guzzling SUVs, so why would they change their habits over such a trivial thing as an extra $10. I mean, can you even see a movie for that much any more?

 

[emperor66]

Amazing at so many people blaming Gamestop for this kind of issue. I feel it is EA (and many other companies) way of making more money. At least when you buy a used game at Gamestop you can take it back after a few days if you really do not like it. What game manufacturer takes back a brand new game if it is truly horrible? Yea, pirating the game before you take it back is always a problem, but if people want to pirate it they will do so anyway. I think if you like the game enough, then you will pay to play it online...if not then oh well, play the single player. When they start to make all games require a new key or subscription even to play single player...then I am out.

 

[Clintonio]

[citation][nom]hillarymakesmecry[/nom]So you can never resell your games when you're done either... Why is that better? Sounds even worse.--------I'm boycotting EA. They haven't gotten any of my money in awhile and they'll never get any of my money in the future.[/citation]

It means these things don't bother us. I only use Steam too.

 

[jerreece]

[citation][nom]guanyu210379[/nom]Example : new game costs $40Used game costs $20 and then $10 extra...which makes $30??? ????????????????????????????????????????????????????If companies start to do stupid things like this, I just have to switch to piracy.First DRM and now this? Using pirated products begins to be more and more comfortable.[/citation]

Yeah but this is all about playing "ONLINE". We're talking online through EA servers (which need money to operate). A pirated game typically doesn't play well with a developer's server. Something about a CD-Key that's not already in use, etc.

So pirating won't fix the problem EA is creating.

I can understand why they're doing this from a business stand point. And like you, I'm not thrilled with it. Good thing I don't play any EA Sports games.

 

[zeroabg]

BACKBREAKER, goodbye and good riddance madden, a disgrace to football and video games.

 

[zeroabg]

[citation][nom]MDillenbeck[/nom]So much to respond to...
What is your view of the very successful MMORPG business model? After all, you buy a software package that is useless unless you pay $10 a month! EA could easily argue they are being quite generous for allowing online content for a mere $100 a lifetime instead.(This question goes out to all outraged against EA - specifically, why do you view the business models so differently?)
citation]

simply mmo's require you to be online to play at all, console games have always been single player experiences with multiplayer or online play as an addition to the game while in an mmo online play is the game.

 

[anamaniac]

[citation][nom]drutort[/nom]how about they just sell the games less new... and req everyone to pay monthly or yearly fee, isnt that better? that way when a game is resold you would still have to pay yearly fee like anyone else and the game value its self can be left alone and not inflated...i think its like the MMO's its the monthly/yearly fee that will bring in more money not stupid things like this on used games...but of course that would imply that there services would actually not suck and be worth the monthly/yearly fee[/citation]
Well, that'd actually make good games a lot more expensive, but those crappy games we play for 1 hour before never trying again a lot cheaper, so I'm all for it.

What about people who give away their games? I do that every time my collection gets too big. Would it cost some family $100 just to fully use some old games I gave to them?

This is disgusting.

 

[Guest]

"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"

Translation: "This is me talking and this is a bunch of nonsensical horse shit falling out of my mouth."

 

[FATAL STR1K3]

[citation][nom]guanyu210379[/nom]Forgot to mention...This means also...$10 by renting games...Hmmm....[/citation]
Not that I'm for this or anything... but they said that you can get a 7-day free pass. So not really.

 

[gm0n3y]

[citation][nom]FATAL STR1K3[/nom]Not that I'm for this or anything... but they said that you can get a 7-day free pass. So not really.[/citation]
Unless you want to rent the same game again...

 

[freename]

So this is what the future of DRM is? Single use cd keys?
Ugh..

 

[silky salamandr]

Am I the only one that sees this as a legal problem? I own 360 and ps3 so Im not in anybodies corner. I pay a yearly fee to PLAY GAMES ONLINE on my xbox. So essentially you will be charged TWICE to play a game online. I buy all my games second hand because I feel there is very few titles that deserve 65 bucks of my hard earned money so I let some idiot buy god of war 3(a 5 hour game with no online play and no replay value)and when they are done with it, I pay 35 to 40 bucks, ya know what the game is worth. I knew ea would be doing this crap because Ill never forget it when they are selling money for the godfather and selling perfect golfers in tiger woods for money.

This is why people game on consoles because this is excatly like drm on computer games. You can only use computer games once and once that code is burned, you cant play the game online. Ok we understand that in computer games its an issue of piracy but this is not the case on consoles. Imagine this senerio; you want to play your game at a friends house. You can no longer play the game on your friends console, you have to bring your hd but you find out that the drm ties your system and hd to the game data. Thats fine but your friend has no internet connection and without that, you cannot be able to play the game with the save data(we all know that because of the 360). So to play a game you have to bring your whole setup.

We've seen this years ago when 2K was killing EA sports ten fold so what did EA do? They killed the competition buy whoring out the NFL. This is the same concept. EA doesnt like to compete because they know their products are complete crap so they are going to kill off the used game market. People you need to pay attention whats going on here and look at what this is setting up! With no used game market, prices will go higer and they will churn out the same crap at the higher prices. This goes for everybody.

I dont know if any of you know this but Halo2 collectors edition was a testing bed to see if people will pay more money for the same game but useless extras and it worked thats why you see all the crap editions you have today(I know that cause I was a tester on Halo2). EA has the money and clout to pull this off as a test. Trust me when I say that others WILL follow, and the result is no used game market. In the end we as consumers lose.

For you youngsters hear me out. You dont OWN ANYTHING in this world. We pay 65bucks for a game and we are just RENTING the rights to play it on our console. You couldnt even be able to sell the games you bought cause who wants to buy a castrated game? Thats how it is in the computer gaming world but for different reasons.

Its up to you guys tho. I cant tell you what to do with your money but I dont support EA with mine and havent since they bought out the NFL.

All I know is that im not paying for anything twice. Xbox live gold already gave me access to online games.

 

[matt_b]

You know.....just when you think a notorious douche-bag of a company is trying to turn things around - nope, just still looking for every penny (and company) it can get a hold of.

 

[beayn]

I wish there was no such thing as the stock market. A company must continue to grow (not just make profit) for investors to continue investing. So they can be making good money but if they aren't making more and more money they start to lose investors and this downward spiral starts until the company goes under.

This forces companies to constantly find new ways to make money. It becomes the #1 priority. Not just making profit but INCREASING profit each quarter. If the stock market didn't exist in its current form we probably wouldn't have such problems. Of course, funding might be tight for R&D.

 

[litlefox]

EA continues their idiotic trend of punishing those that legitimately acquire their products. It's almost as if they're begging consumers to switch to less moral means of securing entertainment.

 

[demonhorde665]

ok for starters this is just wrong period , 1 the game will NOT use EA servers on all systems , Xbox games rely of MS servers that are paid for when you sign up for a gold account seriously if i was MS i woudl refuse licensing on any EA game tehy try to charge money for since techincaly MS is providing the online server service NOT EA!!!! However PS 3 and PC versions wil most likely use EA servers since those services are on teh open web and not aclosered network of servers ran by MS like the xbox live is.

secondly some one said that this is to different from used cars sales to compare it to that, well that is BS, we are talking console games they are not easily copied so once you sale your disk you no longer have the game for your continued use.

NO industry gets money for used sales , why the hell shoudlt ehg ame industry be allowed any thing different just becasue tehy found a loop hole when it comes to games?? consumers are protected by the right to sale laws where other industries are concerned , book publishers can't get money for resales on used books , car manufactures cant get money for sale of used cars. but now that the game industry found a loop hole due to the unique nature of thier product people are going to jump up and defend thier abuse of the law ???

any one that is siding with EA needs to pul thier ehads out of thier a--es adn realize what EA is doign here is highly ILLEGAL but they wil liekly get away with it at first because teh nature of their product has allowed such a loophole.