EA: Online Pass profits didn't balance out reputation damage and player frustration
EA is finally ditching Online Passes so the three-year experiment clearly didn't work out quite as it had hoped, but how bad was it? "The amount of money that we made, it didn't replace the amount of frustration we put on our customers and it didn't offset the reputation damage it caused the company," EA Labels president Frank Gibeau has said at E3. Ah. So quite bad.
EA is finally ditching Online Passes so the three-year DRM experiment clearly didn't work out quite as it had hoped, but how bad was it? "The amount of money that we made, it didn't replace the amount of frustration we put on our customers and it didn't offset the reputation damage it caused the company," EA Labels president Frank Gibeau has said at E3. Ah. So quite bad.
Gibeau described the scheme as "flat out dumb" in the interview with Joystiq. "So we said 'it's not worth it,' and so the idea was, look, 'don't do stuff like that anymore.'"
He points out, astutely and blimming obviously, that people who bought a used copy of FIFA might still pay for packs in its wildly successful Ultimate Team mode--if only it weren't locked away behind an Online Pass. If you're not sporty, think of buying Mass Effect 3's multiplayer item packs.
"Frankly, we're being more nuanced and sophisticated about it. Before we used a blunt instrument. Now we're going to be like 'Look, they own it, they bought the disc and it's theirs. They have a legitimate right for not doing anything illegal,'" Gibeau explained.
"If we want to be progressive about it, we will make online services available to them that if they want to buy they can, but they don't have to. At least that way we participate in some monetization. The reputational damage [Online Pass] was causing us was in excess of the dollars we were making."
Following the big announcement, EA started making Online Passes free for older games. And don't worry: Gibeau assures the Online Pass is properly dead and gone; over; finito; kaput. Good.
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Alice O'Connor posted a new article, EA: Online Pass profits didn't balance out reputation damage and player frustration.
EA is finally ditching Online Passes so the three-year experiment clearly didn't work out quite as it had hoped, but how bad was it? "The amount of money that we made, it didn't replace the amount of frustration we put on our customers and it didn't offset the reputation damage it caused the company," EA Labels president Frank Gibeau has said at E3. Ah. So quite bad.-
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You don't have to be always online to play steam games either. People don't forget how bad Origin is, they know how bad it is. There are tons of people like myself that are not happy with having to have 3 different stores installed just to play games. Between steam, origin and ubisoft's thing I've had enough.
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it worked for 30 days for me (thats how long i was offline) and i have some people using games offline on their notebook for longer than that (like a year now?). the offline mode has come a long way and i read that there are permanent solutions if you copy certain files unless the game specifically demands that you log in once in a certain timeframe?
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Steam doesn't require you to be always online either. Steam has an offline mode where you can play all your games without the need for an internet connection.
Once set to offline mode it stays in that mode until you change it back, so you can shut down your PC and when you start up again you can still start up Steam and play your games without an internet connection.
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The world's changing and I get that people have to try and protect their product and make some money to continue financing games which are just getting more and more expensive. But when it screws over your userbase, it pleases me to see companies realize it and actually react properly. I don't give kudos to EA very often, but they get it here.
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