Skate 2 Offers Full Content for Just 5 Dollars

A quick look at the Softpedia gaming section will show you that we list quite a considerable amount of cheats, unlockables, glitches and hints for a wide variety of games. Well, we might need to skip Skate 2, the new skateboarding title from Electronic Arts, when we put together those lists. The reason is that all the codes to unlock stuff we were accustomed to get for free will now cost.

Electronic Arts is saying that gamers can get a new pack for the title, called Time is Money (oh, the irony), which will immediately offer them a chance to play around with all the stuff the game can deliver to them, including new skaters, locations and gear. The pack costs 400 Microsoft Points, which is about 5 dollars in real life.

The trend could be a positive one. As the gaming industry targets more and more people, titles are bound to be too difficult for a lot of them. There's also the lack of time that plagues all the creatures living in the modern world. A lot of players might be interested in getting access to all that a game has to offer from the beginning and initiatives like the Time is Money pack will be something normal and necessary. Those who like to take their time in discovering the title can get access to the same content, but only if they achieve the goals set by the videogame.

But there's also a potentially darker side to the move made by Electronic Arts. Basically, it is asking players to pay for something that is already in the game and not for a piece of DLC bringing in something new. How far are the days when some publisher thinks of charging for the privilege of advancing to the final boss or for the possibility of pulling a 720 on the virtual skateboard?