Weekend Reading: Online Passes, Season Passes, and the Decreasing Value of a Game

The games industry is dominated by trends, some more successful than others, but as soon as some company comes up with a new strategy promises to increase profit, you can bet that almost all other companies will be clamoring to copy the model and increase their own revenue stream.

These days, it's all about passes, whether they're the older online passes, which are intended to prevent used game sales, or season passes, which are seemingly meant to give fans of a game a discount on DLC, but pretty much guarantee that the final game won't even be as great as it could have been.

While I'm all for video game companies making money, especially since development costs are extremely high these days, at least for Triple-A titles, things are getting a bit out of control, decreasing the value of a game we buy in stores or online and spoiling the experience of the actual player.

First up, let's take online passes. Used game sales have been around for a very long time, but since retailers like GameStop put them front and center, developers and publishers have started thinking of ways to persuade players to not buy a cheaper, second hand copy, and get a more expensive new one.

While this could be achieved by offering special pre-order goodies (which hopefully won't be exclusive to certain retailers), or by really promoting the title, many are now resorting to online passes, even titles that don't even have multiplayer or online modes, like the recent Batman: Arkham City.

This practice, especially during crowded holiday season where gamers need to drastically plan their every purchase, as they don't have money to get every game new, means publishers will just end up with bad publicity and with less people that will get to experience their titles.

I've seen many gamers still rent or buy used copies of games with online passes, go through the single-player campaign, and take it back to stores. This means that the work of studios who toiled on multiplayer or other online modes is getting wasted, as less and less people will be able to experience it. At least companies should give people a taste of what they can get for buying the game new or purchasing the online pass.

Secondly, Season Passes might sound and pretty much are a great deal for fans of games like L.A. Noire, Gears of War 3 or Uncharted 3, they just excuse the fact that the studios didn't have time to cram everything they wanted inside the game, or purposely left things out, and want to sell the content later, for even more money.

As such, after buying a full priced new game, you're then asked to shell out another $20 or $25 (20 to 25 Euros) to make sure you'll getting all the extra content that will be released.

Meanwhile, after a certain number of months, there's going to be an inevitable Game of the Year or Complete Edition, which finally brings all the content together, in a package that should have been sold in the first place, and at a lower price.

I'm also seeing quite a few gamers just skip on new releases like Skyrim or Gears of War and just wait for the GOTY editions because they want to get the full experience, even if they'll have to wait some time to get it.

The games industry is changing, but it's not always in a good way. As such, I want and hope that gamers will remind companies of their own needs and not support, or at least for the complete editions, of titles that abuse online or season passes.