On-line passes: A PVC Take

PVC stands for Plastic Videogame Comics, and it will be posted whenever it is possible. It is done with a mobile phone camera, a free photo editor who allow me to put the balloons and a guy who loves money.



I hesitated a lot before participating in this week theme. There is nothing much to say about this issue that was already not talked about a lot. But I decided to participate anyway. After all, I came here to be heard and show my points, and also listen to the others. So let’s begin.

In the end, is all about money. Game companies wants to rise their profits, so they want that used buyers paying them something. After all, if Gamestop can make profit two times with the same copy of a game, why the developers/publishers cannot?

Consumers do not want to expend any extra money. They don’t want to pay once for the used game and one more time for the pass. Also, they do no want to see the value of their used copy decrease.

The passes are not going nowhere for one simple reason. The people who buy it new and don’t usually trade the games (which I believe are the majority of gamers) aren’t affected by the passes, except for losing a few seconds to enter the numbers.

Therefore, companies are not seeing any drop of units sold or profit. So they have no reason to change the practice. See, bad PR alone does not change any corporative attitude if it is not accompanied by loss of money.

On-line passes will only disappear if people stop paying for games that use them. We see a lot of complaining in the internet, but I doubt we have the same number of people with enough ‘balls’ to not buy the next big game because of them.

On the other hand, the on-line pass system is flawed. For example, a father of three would need to fork extras $30 for the three sons to use the same game in the same console. Therefore, I suggest that the on-line passes to be tied not to an account but to the console, so people who play in a shared console will not be forced to buy numerous passes.

I almost forgot, but make the multiplayer free for 24 hours in the first access, so people can evaluate if the pass is worth or not.

Also, as meteorscrap suggested, brilliantly I must say, allow people to buy the pass in the store’s cashier. So both the companies and the store keep having profits. And allow people to buy numerous copies at a discount, like buy three pay two promotions. And allow us to check if a pass is still unused in a website. Thank you.

I don’t see the on-line pass as unfair. The longer the same copy of a game is used to access the servers, the longer companies must keep space in the servers for that game. So, as a new game comes out, they must either shut down the older games access or buy more servers to make room for both. So the pass money can be used to keep the servers running longer.

But in the other hand, the companies can shut down the server at any moment they want. People who bought a game new or used can discover that severs will shut down in weeks. To avoid that, I also defend that the passes must have a minimum access time. For example, if I buy the pass today, I am guaranteed one year of servers. So when a company decides to shut down the servers, they are still obliged to allow one year of access to the guys who bought the game the last day.

Consumer relations are complicated, because it involves money. Nobody wants to lose money. And the only language corporations listen is money. So, as I said numerous times before, if you don’t like the practice, don’t buy it. You can live without Battlefield 3 or Uncharted 3. Yes you can. No, don't do that.

Don't jump!

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