EA getting rid of online passes

http://kotaku.com/ea-getting-rid-of-online-passes-507021364

NOICE

hell must have frozen over

we're in chewbacca land

Server problems, bad economy, they might be losing out by forcing players to buy an online pass on top of their online subscription (if they use xbox - or on top of their internet bill too). Because hey - they don't want to. And there are plenty of game available where you don't have to.

Online passes dont prevent piracy

they encourage it if anything >__>

What.

Is this a trap? I find it hard to believe without there being a catch. Microtransaction spam? More disk locked content? Our games will be always-online and therefore we have no need for an online pass? The brand new offline pass! $10 to play your game offline, yay!

Only time will tell, but it they really are getting rid of online passes without any other consequence... good of EA (it's weird to write this, it even feels wring). Considering that they were one of the first to introduce them, it's quite vexing.

Edit: A commenter on Destructoid sums up what I couldn't put into words:

I have no doubt that they're only doing this because they already have something worse planned.

always online

"Our games are always online now, so were introducing a special $20 pass that gives you access to offline play, 24 hours a day!"

Yeah this is eerie. I can just feel something bad is about to happen to balance out the somewhat good news in the last couple days.

My current theory is that EA will now be charging by the hour for online play.

It's got to be always on DRM...no way they are suddenly changing their stance on this.

HydrasBreath wrote:It's got to be always on DRM...no way they are suddenly changing their stance on this.

Yup

This is exactly what I said early in the thread.

Its super obvious