EA Games stopping Online Passes!

     After a long bout of games hitting where online passes were becoming necessary and alienating second hand gamers, EA makes the smart decision to give it the axe. 
     The online pass programs were added, essentially, to make money off the used games markets.  Requiring a one-time use pass to access a wealth of online play- you would need to purchase it if you were a second hand gamer in order to access many of the online features.  So you would either need to buy new games, or buy a pass to play online. 

"We're 100% committed to creating on-going content and services so the consumers get more value out of the game – you know games like Battlefield and FIFA where there's all sorts of new things that get added all the time – but the whole idea of packaging it up with an online pass, clearly it was not popular, so we listened to people and we stopped doing it."

-Jeff Brown (EA's VP, Corp. Communications)

     Now thatEA has done this, we'll have to see if other major companies follow. and await the massive increase in MicroTransactions market, which I actually don't mind.


Sources
[VentureBeat-GamesBeat Beta]
[Game Informer]