Picture this if you will. Having parted with your money for one of the hottest releases of the year, you slide in the disc, hit the start button and begin your adventure. Only it’s not the complete adventure. Why? Well, because you didn’t enter you “First Purchaser” code. Oh, not to worry. As a first-time purchaser the code is sitting peacefully on a slip in the box. You grab the glossy sheet, go to type in the twelve or twenty digit code depending on your console of choice, only to then remember that you don’t have access to the Internet. What a rarity you think, someone without a connection to the world-wide web in this day and age – especially considering you own a current-gen console. Then you remember that like there are another half a million students attending University for the first time in the just the UK, the majority of whom won’t have the ability to connect their beloved consoles to the Internet whilst in student halls. Bugger.
The actual volume of people this will directly affect aside, the new “First Purchaser” code for Batman: Arkham City crosses a line. Whilst we’re well into a phase where online passes and activation codes for online portions of the game are becoming commonplace, the notion of having to unlock a section of your single-player campaign is outright disgraceful. You have already parted ways with the sum of more than six-and-a-half hours of minimum waged work, you should expect to get one hundred percent of what you’ve paid for, not ninety percent – as is the case with the exclusion of Catwoman from next week’s Arkham City release.
When they were first introduced, online passes were disguised under the thin veil of ‘additional costs’ for maintaining servers and whatnot – something that was rather transparent, given that for someone to purchase the game second-hand in the first place, someone else must no longer be playing it and therefore not using that particular online space. However, we’ve recently seen them become almost a staple part of releases, with it now more unlikely for a game not to have one.
“If you are unable to access the entirety of your legally bought and paid for game whilst offline then there is something fundamentally wrong with the way in which this industry conducts itself and treats its gamers.”
This is where it gets tricky for me personally, see, I don’t buy pre-owned games. No idea why, perhaps it’s an intrinsic nature of enjoying something new, who knows. This means that the ‘online pass’ issue is one I’ve rarely come to horns with. That said, I’m still not their biggest fan. I understand developers and publishers frustrations at the pre-owned market, however, taxing the consumer is not a conducive avenue to go down. The complaint, which is by all means perfectly valid, is that the retailer actually gets a bigger cut from a second sale than they do with the first. So why then are publishers and developers not finding more effective ways of combating that, rather than taking the easier route at charging potential customers.
There’s a financial angle to this particular scenario as well. As a ‘pass’ that ‘unlocks’ access to a portion of the game that is “approximately ten percent” of the overall campaign, as claimed by the developer, why is the price not comparable? Why, when even when comparing the recommend retail price – which no one in their right mind would pay, is the cost of the pass not also ten percent? Really, if all we’re doing is ‘unlocking’ content, then the pass should be no more than £4.99, not the £7.99 that it will actually set you back.
If you are unable to access the entirety of your legally bought and paid for game whilst offline then there is something fundamentally wrong with the way in which this industry conducts itself and treats its gamers. Granted, I don’t mean to generalise as this is only an isolated incident so far – unless you count the withholding of certain cars from DiRT 3, or the multiplayer bonus that Mass Effect 3 is set to bring – but, as with online passes themselves, it only takes one. The first one to set off a chain reaction in which other publishers and developers will follow suit.
“Somehow it is us, the customer, who is getting shafted every which way, and it has to stop.”
This is model that punishes only us gamers. Second-hand buyers, those than rent games, and even a selection of first-time buyers. Somehow it is us, the customer, who is getting shafted every which way, and it has to stop.
It’s a shame for Arkham City as despite being one of the biggest, and probably best, releases this year, it will forever be tarnished with this unsavory brush. However, this argument goes far beyond the simple notion of who should receive the money of a secondary sale. Until developers are liable to fix games if they are broken or unsatisfactory, what right do they have to claim additional revenue from something that would become almost unique to this industry. I have the highest respect and sympathy for developers, especially as many of them are close friends, however, if they want more revenue then increase the asking price and let the market decided what is a fair price.
The gaming community is often called, and often quite rightly, greedy and self-entitled; how disappointing that this is no longer a one-way street.
Comments: [6]
I understand all the disdain toward this but there just as many annoyed with this as there are who were backing Developers when they had the initial outcry over them loosing out. They can’t win on this. The online pass, I’m whole heartedly against. It was just a ploy to gain money back from a select portion of the gaming sector, multiplayer users. But the issue still remained that preowned sales and rentals just for single player still missed the ‘punishment’. Something had to change with the system.
My thought on this was to hark back to the old days of Serial Numbers like Developers employed to combat PC piracy years ago. This seems very similar but rather than not being able to play AT ALL, you get to play and miss out on few trophies and a little game content that doesn’t impact to overall finishing of a game. On that note, missing out on trophies when someone is neither activated for online nor doesn’t have online access isn’t an issue then is it? If I was to agree then only having online activation and this is where they got this wrong.
Harking back again, with Secret of Monkey Island your had a manual and a cipher wheel. When the game started you had a code to enter from the page numbers. On the number page was an icon which you used the cipher wheel to decrypt to enter the correct code in the game. This sort of thing would be archaic now but still plausible. As would another old idea, serial numbers. Using an algorithm based PC ID and code in the game you were produced a code which you activated via phone using a single use serial in the box, much like Microsoft used recently with Windows Vista offline activations. These are two of many ideas they could have done but they didn’t and I agree strictly online is wrong but you can’t deny they had to implement a system to level the preowned, rental and online pass field.
The problem with the system is that it target and taxes those that are buying and using the product, not those that are eating up the Pre-owned market. Publishers have to work with retailers to combat this and find a better solution as this one just isn’t good enough.
Comparing it to serial numbers is a perfectly apt one, but only goes to highlight the flawed nature of this system further. It didn’t combat piracy, but instead probably assisted it and made some people more likely to pirate. Many PC publishers have confirmed that DRM does nothing to curb piracy and instead just punishes those that buy the game legally.
I’m not even convinced that the preowned market is an area that they have a right to. It stills harps back to the notion that you purchase a ‘licence’ of the game and thus never really own it, something I have a BIG problem with. In no other industry does a company had the right, or for that matter even think they do, to have any cut from the second-hand sale of a good; so what makes the games industry so special?
I agree, this problem should have been addressed directly with retailers. They already deal with them for exclusive DLC so it is feasible. But they don’t want to burn their bridges as their sole retail outlet. They couldn’t say that a retailer could only sell the new title if they didn’t sell it pre-owned for 4 months. Anyway, this has little to do with developers recouping money and more to do with publishers selling.
This highlights another option that is already the norm in the music industry, digital distribution. Without retail overheads and no packaging this should be a lot cheaper and easier but Sony and Microsoft charge just as much to retail digitally. But this too falls down because of the very thing any measure would be trying to combat, pre-owned. People want physical copies. A vast number trade in older games towards the purchase of new games, even if the buyer is a saint and only purchases new games they still trade in.
The whole thing needs a rethink because like it or not, the Video Games market is driven by the used market. Without it publishers couldn’t release a AAA or AA or A title EVERY month. Everyone needs this market and any Pass system is just greed.
surely as reviewers of games and all things joyful its only fair to cut a good 20-30% of a reviews final grade if thats all that is released as a fully boxed game, its disgusting.
how can the large companies like OXM or IGN review 80% of a game and then proceed to give it 9/10 or 95%!
I can see where Bonus content and DLC for online multiplayer is marketable (extra maps and the like) and for that yes maybe a small contribution is acceptable but to take away a good chunk of single player is a disgrace.
Unless their promising a further 15-20+ hours like the good old days of Origins Wing Commander Series, or something short of an MMO, we’ve had all this single player game rehashing and the breaking apart of main plot and story lines its been covered up with “expansion packs” for years, I thought the idea of progress was to go forwards not backwards like the consoles seem to have.
I felt the exact same with Dragon age II, after completion of the game realizing that it will only be a matter of time before a good 4-5 DLC packs will be released and later bundled I have played it through possibly twice?
We’re all better off waiting until the next game in a series comes out(especially bioware titles it seems!), buy the game second hand and then download all the DLC to make up for the extra cost we would of paid, this is my main reason for not preordering Skyrim!
RAGE!
I buy a lot of my games pre-owned, but have in the past year or so bought more frequently new games at full RRP. I don’t agree with online passes, but I understand that developers lose out with people buying pre-owned. It’s a tricky area with no apparent outright solution that works for both producer and consumer.
I don’t feel guilty buying pre-owned games. As much as I love unboxing new things and owning something new, I prefer saving money. Online passes are a hindrance for my ethos, but I won’t pay the difference to get the locked on-the-disc content because my main reason for buying pre-owned is the price.
In this instance my hand has been forced and I will buy Arkham City then sell it when done.
EA got it right with Bad Company 2: they didn’t block all the online content, but the pass got you access to extra content. EXTRA content > ONLINE content. I rented and bought Bad Company 2 pre-owned, and was told by the game that I didn’t have the extra content but never punished for it. That kind of pass system is one I’m happy with.
Ok, I’ve only read this article so maybe I’m missing some important point here, but am I correct in thinking that if I were to buy the next Batman game for ~£40, I get 90% of the game available on the disc, and I get the extra 10% from the PSN for free provided I bought the game new and I actually have the internet?
If this is true, why are there not laws against it? There is no way the Iron Maiden could legally release an album and force you to download tracks 9 and 10 from the internet using a pass code. Equally, Disney couldn’t release Aladdin, but force you to download the ending. It’s not even about money or the pre owned market (although this is important – owners of pre-owned games are getting screwed), it’s about owners who buy the game new and can’t complete the single player campaign because they don’t have/can’t afford the internet. A lot of people (especially on BT) have download limits per month. In conclusion, it’s stupid and should be illegal on the grounds that legal owners are effectively having their product at best withheld, and at worst stolen.
P.S. I don’t mind additional content, but this should actually be additional. It should not be required to get a full experience of the original game.