Say Goodbye To EA’s Online Passes

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Say Goodbye To EA’s Online Passes

EA declared weeks ago they would be abolishing their Online Passes for all future games. Now, EA has begun to eliminate them from previous games that had required them for online play. EA has removed Online Passes for the following games:

 

    • Alice: Madness Returns
    • Battlefield 3
    • Battlefield: Bad Company 2
    • Bulletstorm
    • Dead Space 2
    • Dead Space 3
    • Dragon Age 2
    • Dragon Age: Origins
    • Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning
    • Mass Effect 2
    • Mass Effect 3
    • Medal of Honoour
    • Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit
    • Need for Speed: The Run
    • Need for Speed: Shift 2
    • Skate 3
    • The Sims 3

 

EA has officially announced that changes to Online Passes will apply to both Xbox Live and PSN. This news has been warmly received, as before you would need an Online Pass to use the online component for any of EA’s games; the Online Passes in used games, for the most part, were already used by the previous owners.  However, with rumours of Sony and Microsoft attempting to make used games redundant, it’s unclear what role used games will play on the next-gen systems.

Furthermore, an EA spokesman issued the following statement, talking about Online Passes and why they decided to finally obliterate them:

“As we discontinue Online Pass for our new EA titles, we are also in the process of eliminating it from all our existing EA titles as well. We heard the feedback from players and decided to do away with Online Pass altogether.

Players will see it first with some EA Sports titles, where a prompt to enter an Online Pass code will no longer appear in-game; with other titles we are simply making Online Passes available free of charge online.

These are rolling updates that are taking effect over the next several weeks. We hope players continue to enjoy our games and online services for a long time to come”.

 

As seen above, some games will still feature the Online Pass system, but it will be made free. This may require a quick download of the Online Pass, but EA’s change is still very welcome.