Electronic Arts Pulling Existing Online Pass Fee From XBLA And PSN

Earlier this month the benevolent executives at Electronic Arts decided that the time was right to finally pay attention to three years of customer complaints, and drop their controversial Online Pass system from all their future games. Today, EA has taken the next step in that process and confirmed that they will also be removing the program in their existing titles over the coming weeks.

EA’s corporate communications representative, John Reseburg, announced the end of existing Online Pass codes to Game Informer, saying:

“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.”

Once the operation to eradicate the entire Online Pass system has been completed, all older titles on XBLA and PSN will offer the formerly paywall-ed content for free to evil used game buyers and new games will no longer require users to enter codes.

Currently, NeoGAF has found the following titles on Xbox Live have already been set free from the Online Pass restrictions:

• Alice: Madness Returns – American McGee’s Alice (was 800msp)
• Bad Company 2 VIP (was 800msp)
• Bulletstorm Online Pass (was 800msp)
• Dragon Age: Origins – The Stone Prisoner (was 1200msp)
• Dragon Age 2: The Black Emporium (was 800msp)
• Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Online Pass (was 800msp)
• Mass Effect 2: Cerberus Network (was 1200msp)
• Medal of Honor Online Pass (was 800msp)
• Shift 2 Unleashed Online Pass (was 800msp)
• Skate 3: Skate Share Pack (was 800msp)

While it is nice to see the Online Pass program die, in light of the likely upcoming restrictions to used Xbox One (and possibly PlayStation 4) games it is hard to view this as some kind of grand consumer-friendly move by Electronic Arts. Sadly, there seems to be a good chance that EA has decided to do this now as a way to drum up some good press, while at the same time eagerly pushing Microsoft (and possibly Sony) to basically start doing a much bigger Online Pass system for them.

At any rate, our job is to report this good news and give EA a big pat on the back for being so kind to video game consumers. So, hooray for EA…