7 ms·

EA Sports Locks Out Multiplayer Modes On Used Sales

23 points by vaksel 16y ago

aresant 16y ago
Article mentions that users can "unlock" online modes for $10 - looks like it's $10.00 for EACH used game - http://www.easports.com/onlinepass http://www.easports.com/onlinepass Not going to be a popular move for EA but it's a smart business move.
- jgg 16y ago
  >Not going to be a popular move for EA but it's a smart business move. If I'm misreading your post, I apologize, but how is something that pisses off current and potential customers a 'smart business move'?
  - zweben 16y ago
    Because most of them will continue to buy the games anyway. Whether a consumer is pissed off is irrelevant to EA; they have to refuse to buy the product for it to matter, and most don't.
  - aresant 16y ago
    At even a 10% uptake this is going to toss maybe $100,000,000 to EA? GameStop ALONE does $2 BILLION a year in used game sales and EA is a big piece of that. With everybody from BestBuy to Amazon to Wallmart entering the fray of the secondary-games market I think yah, it's a good business move.
sliverstorm 16y ago
"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" Read: "This is an important inflection point in our business because it allows us to extract more money out of our customers"
- malnourish 16y ago
  However, are they really extracting more money from their customers if they are charging used gamers for online content? They don't make money from used game sales, resale stores like Gamestop do. While this is a very questionable move from a consumer standpoint, it makes business sense. MMOs rightfully charge for multiplayer access, however they have servers to maintain and use the resources acquired to improve their game and keep it fresh. One could argue that if EA wants to make this idea appealing to customers, they should offer new content for free for the paying subscribers of used games, or those who paid for a new game. Then again, they may just charge us for cheat codes and "VIP" mode like they have in the past. Even if one were to buy the game new.
  - dman 16y ago
    What I dont understand is that over the 10 years the size of the market has gone up, sales of blockbuster games have gone up, average selling price of a game has gone up, revenues via additional digital content has come in, product placement has trickled into some games, cost of servers has gone down, cost of bandwidth has gone down, cost of hiring programmers has roughly remained the same, some games have even gotten money via movie rights. What is it about publishers cost structure that pushes them to nickel and dime customers inspite of all the above mentioned factors ?
    - jparise 16y ago
      Development costs have gone up. Even if the cost of hiring individual programmers has remained constant (and I don't have evidence one way or another there - we'd have to consult something like Game Developers' annual salary survey and apply the appropriate adjustments), development teams have definitely grown in size. Bigger teams mean more developers (from all disciplines), including additional management and QA staff. There are also other cost areas to consider, such as licensing fees and devkit costs, but I'm afraid that I can't share specific numbers there.
      - dman 16y ago
malnourish 16y ago
Interesting decision. I wonder if this will pay off for them. I'm fine with buying new games if the content is worth it, but many times, EA downloadable content is not. If they require a new purchase for multiplayer and online franchises, those features better be damn enticing. Thankfully with Backbreaker coming out, EA will have some competition in the football market before their NFL lockout is over. I'm all for innovation and I know they are trying to maximize return, but if the content isn't up to snuff they're playing some tough odds.
jrockway 16y ago
Nice. So the game is $60, then you have to buy XBox Live for $10/month, then you have to buy each game company's online service for $10. A great deal for everyone! Except the end-user... (Maybe they should add some biological DRM, too. The game controllers should do a DNA test on your blood, and if it detects your friend playing at your house, it should charge you a $30 "game sharing fee". It's a good idea because before, they got $0 from this. Nobody will be upset at all, just like nobody was upset with Ubisoft's phone-home-for-single-player-game technique.)
- malnourish 16y ago
  Personally, I think Ubisoft's decision with their current DRM techniques to be the most asinine choice feasible. It is true, however, that game companies do not directly profit from used game sales. EA is trying to profit from the money that is not being made, (hopefully) without hurting the customers that buy the game new. The $10 for the online fee might be saved if you're buying it used, then you pay $10 for the subscription and, used prices low enough, still save money off retail. For example, EA SPORT GAME N is $60 new, online features included. EA SPORT GAME N is $45 used, $10 for online features, total is $55, a net win for the consumer, and EA makes some money back too. I do think it's a questionable call, but it's an understandable one.
- sdm 16y ago
  You only have to pay the $10 if you bought the game used. If you bought the game used, you are paying a fair bit less than $60.
  - henrikschroder 16y ago
    Yes, but the people who buy their games used do not want to pay full price or near full price for their games. They are extremely price-conscious and instead of suddenly paying $10 more for their used games for no good reason, they will just not buy as many used games as before. It's the same mentality as the whole pirate discussion. If you are a game publisher, the people who buy the games used are not your customers. They clearly state that they do not wish to buy your product at your price point. Same with pirates, they also clearly state their preferences. Neither group is your customers. However, people that buy your games new and sell them on are your customers, but with this move, your product becomes less valuable to them ($10 to be exact) and this probably makes a few of them not buy your game in the first place. What EA dearly wishes to happen though is that Gamestop and similar should soak this cost to keep the used games market running exactly as before. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. At least EA is trying stuff so it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
w1ntermute 16y ago
I think everyone's looking at this the wrong way. EA already has countless flaws which people have been whining about for a long time. The further out of touch with their customers they become, the better chance other game studios have of taking a piece of their pie. I'm hoping someone capitalizes on this opportunity to show customers that at least some non-indie game studios are capable of not screwing their customers over.
davidmurphy 16y ago
I don't play console video games, but this makes me kind of angry. I know a company has to make money ... but the recession isn't the time to spring things like this on consumers (if ever).
jsz0 16y ago
This is a really bad move especially for sports games. They don't tend to have the lasting online community of FPS, RTS or RPGs. People move onto the new yearly release quickly to get updated rosters. I don't think a $10 fee is going to improve that situation at all. It will likely make it worse. The people who do spend $10 are going to be very disappointed to find out few people are playing a -1 or -2 year old sports game online anymore. Finding compatible skill/pings/maturity is tough with a big user base. Nearly impossible with a small one.
dman 16y ago
If suckiness of existing players is any indicator of what market is ripe for innovation, then game publishing seems to be the frontier market. I dont know of any other industry that works against their customers interests with as much precision and passion as the game publishing industry. Between Ubisoft, Activision and EA its hard to decide whom I hate most.
- JMiao 16y ago
  not to dampen your point, but you could say the exact same thing about any mainstream media space (film studios, record labels, book publishers).
  - dman 16y ago
    Ive not seen movie studios, publishers, record labels do the following yet a) Require constant internet connectivity while you watch a movie. b) Hold onto the bonus that is due their employees - http://www.physorg.com/news191742223.html http://www.physorg.com/news191742223.html
    - dagw 16y ago
      If you've heard of movie studios screwing people out of bonuses, then you have probably never worked in the industry.
      - JMiao 16y ago
        *haven't?
      - JMiao 16y ago
        oh, and movies could be easily replaced with music, film/tv (writer's guild?), etc. "creative accounting" as they say.
adi92 16y ago
i don't know much about how this works, but why cant people just bypass this by creating a separate account for every game they purchase and then pass on that account's details to whoever they sell the game to
- mukyu 16y ago
  You have to have a gold subscription to use the account online (in non-guest mode). So you would have no friends, no gamerscore, tens of accounts and paying for gold on them constantly. No one would do this and that you would even think of it makes me think you've never even used xbox live.
ehnus 16y ago
I don't get why people commenting on this article feel that EA is in the wrong here. EA makes nothing off the sales of used games yet currently incurs the cost of providing online services. What would be a better solution?
- sgk284 16y ago
  The original buyer already covered the cost of online services provided. Reselling doesn't cost EA anything (it is no different than if the original buyer had just kept playing the game). It would be different if suddenly two players could play at the same time, but this is like lending a book to a friend... you both can't be reading it at the exact same moment.
  - ehnus 16y ago
    The two problems I see with your analogy to books is that books don't have an ongoing cost for infrastructure maintenance which online services do. I wouldn't put it past EA to figure out the cost of services provided with a game diminishes over time with one owner, but if someone new were to pick up the game and start playing then they would be incurring a heavier system load than originally forecast. Book publishers also generally aren't trying to recoup $50-100,000,000 development budgets.
    - dman 16y ago
      In that case it would be a simpler mental model for the user to just decouple the usage cost from the game cost aka the World of Warcraft model. Why let the original purchaser play as much as they want, cap their usage too (~40-50 hrs of playtime for free) and charge them for usage beyond that. Also if the cost of running servers is so high and such a big drag,why dont they let third parties run game servers and charge a fee. That way competition among game server hosting companies would bring the price down closer to what it should be in the real world.
      - ehnus 16y ago
        That doesn't address my second point of recouping high development costs. Anyways, they would have to coordinate this with the platform providers which tend to keep things bolted down quite tightly when it comes to the provision of online services. Are there even any console games available for the Xbox 360 or PS3 that charge monthly fees?
PostOnce 16y ago
They're going to lose a lawsuit over something like this in the near future. I'm not sure what law they're breaking, but going out of your way to cripple products to increase your chance of sales has got to be illegal somehow...
- anedisi 16y ago
  i sure hope they do. so they are charging 2 times for the same package.
- zweben 16y ago
  I wouldn't be so sure about that. The only bit of law I've ever heard of that stands in the way of this sort of thing is the first-sale doctrine, which says that you can sell copyrighted works without permission from the copyright holder. First-sale doctrine has become pretty toothless with the advent of DRM and software that is 'licensed' rather than sold. Companies have a broad ability to cripple their products in pretty much whatever way they see fit. Consumers have a discouragingly persistent willingness to put up with restrictions that are not in their best interest. People will whine about this, but then most of them will go out and buy the games anyway.
seekely 16y ago
The hostility against these decisions always frustrates me. The market will sort this out, and I'm pretty sure despite all the moaning, it will fall in EA's favor. You can't expect EA or any game publisher to just give their product away. EA is a business and needs to make money in order to sustain making AAA titles. Nowadays, there are hundreds of people working their hearts out to deliver each title. These people would like to get paid. Gamestop does not pay their salaries. EA does. Every time somebody gives $55 to Gamestop instead of $60 to EA, an hour or two of somebody's work is potentially taken at a loss to EA. Budgets of games are not going to go down. Gamers wouldn't go for the drop in quality. The used market is not going to go away. It's perfectly rational for gamers to try and make a buck. But this puts EA in quite the quandary. Rewarding gamers for purchasing the game new is rational and fair. Not evil. EA will make money and the gamer will continue to get well made games. Just because a feature or part of the game was once 'free' doesn't justify it always being 'free'. The market is allowed to correct itself.
- henrikschroder 16y ago
  Noone is expecting them to give it away, stop putting up straw-men. This is the problem: One person buying the game and playing it for a year: EA revenue: X$ EA cost for development and infrastructure per game: Y$ One person buying the game, playing for half a year, someone else buying it used, playing for half a year: EA revenue: X+10$ EA cost: Y$ If X > Y as we suspect, then this is a naked cash grab. Those tend to be very unpopular. If X < Y, then the move gets more understandable, but they really should think about changing their business model so they can charge for the online experience separately.
  - hoelle 16y ago
    The tone and popularity of this sort of reply really bothers me. The grandparent is the best explanation of the actual business decision in the entire thread. How was any of it "straw man"? Trying to get paid for your product when someone uses it isn't any more of a "cash grab" than any other company selling any other product for money. In other industries when a maker sees no share of the sale of his work, we usually find a way to call what happened to him what it is: theft. If EULAs were enforced, the situation would be different since the "non transferable license" would maybe kill the commercial used games market.

23 points by vaksel 16y ago

Article mentions that users can "unlock" online modes for $10 - looks like it's $10.00 for EACH used game - http://www.easports.com/onlinepass http://www.easports.com/onlinepass Not going to be a popular move for EA but it's a smart business move.

jgg 16y ago
>Not going to be a popular move for EA but it's a smart business move. If I'm misreading your post, I apologize, but how is something that pisses off current and potential customers a 'smart business move'?
- zweben 16y ago
  Because most of them will continue to buy the games anyway. Whether a consumer is pissed off is irrelevant to EA; they have to refuse to buy the product for it to matter, and most don't.
- aresant 16y ago
  At even a 10% uptake this is going to toss maybe $100,000,000 to EA? GameStop ALONE does $2 BILLION a year in used game sales and EA is a big piece of that. With everybody from BestBuy to Amazon to Wallmart entering the fray of the secondary-games market I think yah, it's a good business move.

sliverstorm 16y ago

"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" Read: "This is an important inflection point in our business because it allows us to extract more money out of our customers"

malnourish 16y ago
However, are they really extracting more money from their customers if they are charging used gamers for online content? They don't make money from used game sales, resale stores like Gamestop do. While this is a very questionable move from a consumer standpoint, it makes business sense. MMOs rightfully charge for multiplayer access, however they have servers to maintain and use the resources acquired to improve their game and keep it fresh. One could argue that if EA wants to make this idea appealing to customers, they should offer new content for free for the paying subscribers of used games, or those who paid for a new game. Then again, they may just charge us for cheat codes and "VIP" mode like they have in the past. Even if one were to buy the game new.
- dman 16y ago
  What I dont understand is that over the 10 years the size of the market has gone up, sales of blockbuster games have gone up, average selling price of a game has gone up, revenues via additional digital content has come in, product placement has trickled into some games, cost of servers has gone down, cost of bandwidth has gone down, cost of hiring programmers has roughly remained the same, some games have even gotten money via movie rights. What is it about publishers cost structure that pushes them to nickel and dime customers inspite of all the above mentioned factors ?
  - jparise 16y ago
    Development costs have gone up. Even if the cost of hiring individual programmers has remained constant (and I don't have evidence one way or another there - we'd have to consult something like Game Developers' annual salary survey and apply the appropriate adjustments), development teams have definitely grown in size. Bigger teams mean more developers (from all disciplines), including additional management and QA staff. There are also other cost areas to consider, such as licensing fees and devkit costs, but I'm afraid that I can't share specific numbers there.
    - dman 16y ago

malnourish 16y ago

Interesting decision. I wonder if this will pay off for them. I'm fine with buying new games if the content is worth it, but many times, EA downloadable content is not. If they require a new purchase for multiplayer and online franchises, those features better be damn enticing. Thankfully with Backbreaker coming out, EA will have some competition in the football market before their NFL lockout is over. I'm all for innovation and I know they are trying to maximize return, but if the content isn't up to snuff they're playing some tough odds.

jrockway 16y ago

Nice. So the game is $60, then you have to buy XBox Live for $10/month, then you have to buy each game company's online service for $10. A great deal for everyone! Except the end-user... (Maybe they should add some biological DRM, too. The game controllers should do a DNA test on your blood, and if it detects your friend playing at your house, it should charge you a $30 "game sharing fee". It's a good idea because before, they got $0 from this. Nobody will be upset at all, just like nobody was upset with Ubisoft's phone-home-for-single-player-game technique.)

malnourish 16y ago
Personally, I think Ubisoft's decision with their current DRM techniques to be the most asinine choice feasible. It is true, however, that game companies do not directly profit from used game sales. EA is trying to profit from the money that is not being made, (hopefully) without hurting the customers that buy the game new. The $10 for the online fee might be saved if you're buying it used, then you pay $10 for the subscription and, used prices low enough, still save money off retail. For example, EA SPORT GAME N is $60 new, online features included. EA SPORT GAME N is $45 used, $10 for online features, total is $55, a net win for the consumer, and EA makes some money back too. I do think it's a questionable call, but it's an understandable one.
sdm 16y ago
You only have to pay the $10 if you bought the game used. If you bought the game used, you are paying a fair bit less than $60.
- henrikschroder 16y ago
  Yes, but the people who buy their games used do not want to pay full price or near full price for their games. They are extremely price-conscious and instead of suddenly paying $10 more for their used games for no good reason, they will just not buy as many used games as before. It's the same mentality as the whole pirate discussion. If you are a game publisher, the people who buy the games used are not your customers. They clearly state that they do not wish to buy your product at your price point. Same with pirates, they also clearly state their preferences. Neither group is your customers. However, people that buy your games new and sell them on are your customers, but with this move, your product becomes less valuable to them ($10 to be exact) and this probably makes a few of them not buy your game in the first place. What EA dearly wishes to happen though is that Gamestop and similar should soak this cost to keep the used games market running exactly as before. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. At least EA is trying stuff so it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

w1ntermute 16y ago

I think everyone's looking at this the wrong way. EA already has countless flaws which people have been whining about for a long time. The further out of touch with their customers they become, the better chance other game studios have of taking a piece of their pie. I'm hoping someone capitalizes on this opportunity to show customers that at least some non-indie game studios are capable of not screwing their customers over.

davidmurphy 16y ago

I don't play console video games, but this makes me kind of angry. I know a company has to make money ... but the recession isn't the time to spring things like this on consumers (if ever).

jsz0 16y ago

This is a really bad move especially for sports games. They don't tend to have the lasting online community of FPS, RTS or RPGs. People move onto the new yearly release quickly to get updated rosters. I don't think a $10 fee is going to improve that situation at all. It will likely make it worse. The people who do spend $10 are going to be very disappointed to find out few people are playing a -1 or -2 year old sports game online anymore. Finding compatible skill/pings/maturity is tough with a big user base. Nearly impossible with a small one.

dman 16y ago

If suckiness of existing players is any indicator of what market is ripe for innovation, then game publishing seems to be the frontier market. I dont know of any other industry that works against their customers interests with as much precision and passion as the game publishing industry. Between Ubisoft, Activision and EA its hard to decide whom I hate most.

JMiao 16y ago
not to dampen your point, but you could say the exact same thing about any mainstream media space (film studios, record labels, book publishers).
- dman 16y ago
  Ive not seen movie studios, publishers, record labels do the following yet a) Require constant internet connectivity while you watch a movie. b) Hold onto the bonus that is due their employees - http://www.physorg.com/news191742223.html http://www.physorg.com/news191742223.html
  - dagw 16y ago
    If you've heard of movie studios screwing people out of bonuses, then you have probably never worked in the industry.
    - JMiao 16y ago
      *haven't?
    - JMiao 16y ago
      oh, and movies could be easily replaced with music, film/tv (writer's guild?), etc. "creative accounting" as they say.

adi92 16y ago

i don't know much about how this works, but why cant people just bypass this by creating a separate account for every game they purchase and then pass on that account's details to whoever they sell the game to

mukyu 16y ago
You have to have a gold subscription to use the account online (in non-guest mode). So you would have no friends, no gamerscore, tens of accounts and paying for gold on them constantly. No one would do this and that you would even think of it makes me think you've never even used xbox live.

ehnus 16y ago

I don't get why people commenting on this article feel that EA is in the wrong here. EA makes nothing off the sales of used games yet currently incurs the cost of providing online services. What would be a better solution?

sgk284 16y ago
The original buyer already covered the cost of online services provided. Reselling doesn't cost EA anything (it is no different than if the original buyer had just kept playing the game). It would be different if suddenly two players could play at the same time, but this is like lending a book to a friend... you both can't be reading it at the exact same moment.
- ehnus 16y ago
  The two problems I see with your analogy to books is that books don't have an ongoing cost for infrastructure maintenance which online services do. I wouldn't put it past EA to figure out the cost of services provided with a game diminishes over time with one owner, but if someone new were to pick up the game and start playing then they would be incurring a heavier system load than originally forecast. Book publishers also generally aren't trying to recoup $50-100,000,000 development budgets.
  - dman 16y ago
    In that case it would be a simpler mental model for the user to just decouple the usage cost from the game cost aka the World of Warcraft model. Why let the original purchaser play as much as they want, cap their usage too (~40-50 hrs of playtime for free) and charge them for usage beyond that. Also if the cost of running servers is so high and such a big drag,why dont they let third parties run game servers and charge a fee. That way competition among game server hosting companies would bring the price down closer to what it should be in the real world.
    - ehnus 16y ago
      That doesn't address my second point of recouping high development costs. Anyways, they would have to coordinate this with the platform providers which tend to keep things bolted down quite tightly when it comes to the provision of online services. Are there even any console games available for the Xbox 360 or PS3 that charge monthly fees?

PostOnce 16y ago

They're going to lose a lawsuit over something like this in the near future. I'm not sure what law they're breaking, but going out of your way to cripple products to increase your chance of sales has got to be illegal somehow...

anedisi 16y ago
i sure hope they do. so they are charging 2 times for the same package.
zweben 16y ago
I wouldn't be so sure about that. The only bit of law I've ever heard of that stands in the way of this sort of thing is the first-sale doctrine, which says that you can sell copyrighted works without permission from the copyright holder. First-sale doctrine has become pretty toothless with the advent of DRM and software that is 'licensed' rather than sold. Companies have a broad ability to cripple their products in pretty much whatever way they see fit. Consumers have a discouragingly persistent willingness to put up with restrictions that are not in their best interest. People will whine about this, but then most of them will go out and buy the games anyway.

seekely 16y ago

The hostility against these decisions always frustrates me. The market will sort this out, and I'm pretty sure despite all the moaning, it will fall in EA's favor. You can't expect EA or any game publisher to just give their product away. EA is a business and needs to make money in order to sustain making AAA titles. Nowadays, there are hundreds of people working their hearts out to deliver each title. These people would like to get paid. Gamestop does not pay their salaries. EA does. Every time somebody gives $55 to Gamestop instead of $60 to EA, an hour or two of somebody's work is potentially taken at a loss to EA. Budgets of games are not going to go down. Gamers wouldn't go for the drop in quality. The used market is not going to go away. It's perfectly rational for gamers to try and make a buck. But this puts EA in quite the quandary. Rewarding gamers for purchasing the game new is rational and fair. Not evil. EA will make money and the gamer will continue to get well made games. Just because a feature or part of the game was once 'free' doesn't justify it always being 'free'. The market is allowed to correct itself.

henrikschroder 16y ago
Noone is expecting them to give it away, stop putting up straw-men. This is the problem: One person buying the game and playing it for a year: EA revenue: X$ EA cost for development and infrastructure per game: Y$ One person buying the game, playing for half a year, someone else buying it used, playing for half a year: EA revenue: X+10$ EA cost: Y$ If X > Y as we suspect, then this is a naked cash grab. Those tend to be very unpopular. If X < Y, then the move gets more understandable, but they really should think about changing their business model so they can charge for the online experience separately.
- hoelle 16y ago
  The tone and popularity of this sort of reply really bothers me. The grandparent is the best explanation of the actual business decision in the entire thread. How was any of it "straw man"? Trying to get paid for your product when someone uses it isn't any more of a "cash grab" than any other company selling any other product for money. In other industries when a maker sees no share of the sale of his work, we usually find a way to call what happened to him what it is: theft. If EULAs were enforced, the situation would be different since the "non transferable license" would maybe kill the commercial used games market.