14 DAY TRIAL // The upcoming SSX snowboarding game will have an online pass system, according to its publisher, Electronic Arts. But this won’t prevent those who buy used copies of the title from accessing the multiplayer mode, as it just limits the amount of in-game rewards they’ll get from finishing races.
Online passes have become quite frequent in the gaming industry today, with lots of developers and publishers deciding to use such things in order to keep gamers from buying used copies of a title.
While these measures usually prevent people from accessing the multiplayer mode of a game, we’ve already seen titles like Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning use an online pass that denies people access to extra missions.
Now, to no one’s surprise, we hear that SSX, the new snowboarding simulator from EA, also employs an online pass. Before you get angry, however, it’s worth pointing out that the pass doesn’t lock second hand gamers out of the game’s multiplayer modes, instead it just limits their in-game rewards.
EA posted a statement, via Game Informer, about the online pass, describing what sort of limitations those who didn’t activate the code in new copies or those who didn’t want to buy the digital pass for $10/€10 had.
“In SSX, players without an Online Pass are able to compete and play in both of SSX's online game modes, Explore and Global Events with no restrictions. In Global Events, the top finishers from each event are awarded with in-game credits. These in-game credits earned during play will not be awarded to the player if they do not have an Online Pass; these credits will be stored so that at any time, if a player redeems an Online Pass code, all the credits that they had previously earned in Global Events will be immediately awarded to them.”
What’s more, the game’s economy is balanced in such a way that you can unlock all available content with the credits gained from the Explore events, so you don’t really need the extra ones available in Global Events.
This is definitely great news for cash-strapped gamers out there, but it might also tempt many other players to buy used copies of SSX instead of new ones.