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EA won’t be rebooting its Online Pass program despite the news that neither the Xbox One or PS4 will offer first party anti-used games restrictions.
The publisher had first announced the removal of the program, which charges those who bought used game an additional fee to activate it for online multiplayer, in the days before Microsoft unvieled a new console that was said to have its own anti-used game systems in place.
Since then Sony has revealed that its PlayStation 4 wouldn’t have any such restrictions and Microsoft was forced to backtrack, but EA tells Polygon it doesn’t plan on reversing course.
[There is] no change to our decision to discontinue Online Pass," said EA’s senior director of corporate communications John Reseburg. "It is dead."“As we said a few weeks ago, none of our new EA titles will include online pass, and we are removing it from existing games as well. Nothing else on today’s news, but did want to be clear that our online pass decision was based on player feedback, and there’s no change."
Though some have suggested Microsoft’s initial move to restrict the use of pre-owned games was the result of industry pressure, EA COO Peter Moore claims his company wasn’t part of it.
"As the guy who is the chief operating officer of Electronic Arts, I can tell you that EA did not aggressively lobby for the platform holders to put some gating function in there to allow or disallow used games," he said.
"I am on record as being a proponent of used games. I like the ecosystem."
