EA kills its controversial Online Pass program
EA is doing away with its Online Pass program from this point forward, a decision the video game publisher says is partially based on player response. — “Yes, we're discontinuing Online Pass,” EA senior director of corporate communications …
Context & Ripple Effects
EA’s move sits within a long-running tension in its strategy: the company made a push into online services in 2009 after adopting internet-required DRM, while its April pullback from Facebook marked a separate retrenchment from a platform bet. Customer struggles with SimCity’s onerous DRM in March 2013 made player tolerance for restrictive access systems especially consequential.
First-order effects
- EA will stop using Online Pass for future games, removing an access condition that it says player feedback helped end.
- Players buying EA’s future releases will no longer face the Online Pass program as part of accessing the publisher’s games.
Second-order effects
- EA’s online-services strategy must place more weight on features players choose to use rather than an access program that had become a source of backlash.
Third-order effects
- If other game publishers face the same resistance to mandatory access systems, recurring online revenue will increasingly depend on services that demonstrate value rather than restrictions attached to game ownership.
The trend: Game publishers are being pushed to separate durable online services from access controls that players perceive as punitive.