Courts? Courts? Why would a court force a company to sell something it doesn’t want to sell?
If EA sells a game that only includes one chance at mulitplayer, that’s their business. You can either buy it or not. That’s your business. But outside of false advertising, that’s not anything a court would become involved in.
Again, which is why they are announcing it now and using it on their 2011 games. The article in the OP, and everything I’ve read in the links, say this is only for new games they are selling and not going to be applied retroactively. So when you buy Tiger Woods 2011, you are buying the game and a onetime multiplayer. I would join you in your anger if they did it retroactively to games already sold, but from all I’ve read, it’s only for new games. If you have information that they’re going to start to force it on older games, let me know, and I’ll decry it.
Because I missed the final paragraph of mhendo’s post above :smack:. I retract that part of my post.
I still think that if they wanted to actually be fair about this, they should allow the original buyer to decline multiplayer and get $10 back. Or at least if the original buyer never accesses multiplayer, then the used purchaser can do so - it’s unclear to me from the article if this is possible.
Between this sort of crap and what they’ve done to franchises I once liked, EA just sucks.
For something like Bioshock, I could see this being a valid argument - not many people are going to play through the same single-player campaign multiple times. But the kind of games where you have matches against bots or other players are practically designed for replayability. If you’re making this sort of game and people only want to play it once, you are doing something horribly wrong.
Talk to the textbook industry. I spent about 150 bucks on mandatory online supplements to my books that were pretty much just there to make money off secondary buyers.
I don’t see how they wouldn’t. The key would most likely be printed on the disc. If I bought a used disc, I’d certainly give it a try before sending EA my $10, and I can’t think of a way that EA would be able to rescind that original key.
It sounds to me like I’ve owned my last EA sports game. I have zero sympathy for EA’s position.
The real loser will be the people who buy the game new and then want to sell it. EA has just deflated the used prices, which means if you buy an EA game new, you’re going to take a bath when you go to sell it. This is nothing more than a slap in the face to their customers.
If I buy something, I expect to be able to sell it on when I’m done with it, and I don’t expect the original manufacturer to artificially depress the prices on the used market. That’s not their right, and I won’t do business with someone who does that.
It’s unlikely, but I’d like to see Microsoft and Sony put a stop to this. I pay for Xbox Live, and I expect the games I buy to work on Live without paying anything additional to the publisher. Ultimately, this harmful to the whole Xbox Live network and their ability to extract $35 a year from my pocketbook. If this becomes a regular thing, I can see myself and a lot of other people just opting out of online play altogether.
If EA Sports wants to go for the total experience that is professional sports, then they should be able to recreate the lock outs that have plagued pro sports as well!
How about the key being associated with your XBox Live account (or whatever it’s called on PS3) and not transferable? When you try to use the key, their server says “this key is already associated with a different account, access denied”.
While it’s not clear to me exactly how this will work, the language on the EA website suggests that the Online Pass will be associated with a specific online EA account.
So, when you buy the game, you’ll have to log into your EA account and then enter the Online Pass code to activate your online features. This means that, when you sell the game to someone else, unless you are willing to hand over your online EA account information, you won’t be able to pass the code along to the buyer. The buyer will have to purchase a new code, which will then be associated with his/her online EA account.
I could be wrong about this, but that’s my interpretation of language like this:
ETA: It appears that MrSquishy reached pretty much the same conclusion.
The quoted section of my previous post addresses that issue. If the original buyer does not use the code, s/he can pass it on to the next person, who can then use it. Basically, the code is valid until it’s used for the first time; once it’s been used, it cannot be used by someone else.
I would prefer them dropping the price $10, then making every individual pay to play online, mainly as I don’t play my sports games online. That’s what dorm buddies are for.
Yeah - that’s not going to happen, unfortunately. They’re also pulling older games (but not really that much older) from their server support, forcing you to buy newer games. That pisses me off far more than this.
EA absolutely has the right to choose this business model for their games. And I absolutely have the right to refuse to buy any of their games because of this stupid business model.
Pretty much how I feel about it, though I think it certainly does underline how so much of copyright doctrine is a square peg/round hole when it comes to dealing with software and computer data.
A happy medium would be allowing the product to only work when tied to a specific username/account, but allow that user to then transfer it to other persons. Solves the problem of both people playing the game at the same time, but keeps the first sale doctrine intact.
I’m a bit surprised Gamestop seems on board with this. Maybe they think they’ll still get a bunch of used game sales from people who don’t read the fine print, then they’ll get to add new game sales on top of that when the used buyers come back and complain?
As a gamer, I’m kind of irritated at this decision. It’s my game, I bought it- why does it matter if someone else owned it before me? It’s not like they can keep playing it.
Yeah, but this assumes that the copyright owners are actually interested in doctrines such as “first sale” and “fair use.”
Make no mistake, if the content publishing industries (books, music, movies, software, all of them) thought they could convince Congress to completely eliminate both of those doctrines, they’d do it tomorrow and not lose a moment’s sleep. They’ve been chiseling away at both over the years, doing as much as possible to undermine them, often via backdoors such as the DMCA.
Yeah, they should just let everyone only pay for the pieces of a game which they will play. If Im not interested in playing secret level 34 or some shit i shouldn’t have to pay for it. In fact they should give us the game for free and just bill us after we beat the game or stop playing so they know what pieces we used.
BTW why on earth do some of you think that EA should give a rats ass what the value of your game is on the used market? They don’t sell used games.
Because they’re trying to sell me a new game, and I care about what I’m going to get for it when I go to sell it. If I know I’m not going to be able to sell it, or I’m only going to be able to sell it for a fraction of what I usually sell games for because EA has crippled it, I’m not going to pay $60 for it. If they reduce the value of the game by $10, they can’t expect me to continue to pay full price for it.
But regardless, I really think it’s up to Microsoft to put a stop to this nonsense ASAP. It should be in the Xbox developer agreement that any game that has an online component can be played online by any owner without any additional payment to the developer.
I absolutely agree with this. EA has every right to do it. I think it’s stupid and I disagree with it, and therefore will not buy more EA games (crap, Bioware is owned by EA) I therefore will not buy (the vast majority of) EA games, certainly not the sports titles, the only one of which I’m ever interested in is FIFA. Seeing as how I like both FIFA and PES I am now a loyal PES fan. Thanks EA for making my decision so much easier.