EA Games is ditching online passes

Thank god.

EA Games has announced that due to its player base not really taking it up on the offer of paying for games' multiplayer content, after they bought the game second hand or borrowed it from a friend, that it was dropping the much hated Online Pass system.

“We're discontinuing Online Pass,” EA senior director of corporate communications John Reseburg said while speaking with VentureBeat. “None of our new EA titles will include that feature.” This does however mean that previously Online Pass enabled games will still continue to use them, but all future games will not.

Remember the sickening feeling you felt when you first saw this?

If you were never on the receiving end of Online Pass woes, here's how it worked. If you bought the game new, you had a code bundled with the game that you put in to play online features like multiplayer. However if you got the game second hand, rented it or borrowed it, then the code would likely already have been used, so you'd have to make a point of buying another one, which usually cost between £5 and £10 depending on the title.

Of course just because EA is ridding its future games of online passes, doesn't mean everyone else will. However, we've seen publishers lead the way with the introduction of DRM like this, so maybe EA can help lead the way to its disuse too.

KitGuru Says: People are always very quick to jump on EA when it makes a mistake or does something dumb, so you have to give it props here. This is a good move, as it removes one of the most insulting forms of DRM in existence from EA's library. 

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