A little over a year ago, mega-publisher EA announced that it would be blocking online play in the majority of its games for people who didn't have what became known as an "online pass". If you bought your game first hand, you'd be issued with a single-use online pass code in the box, but if you bought a pre-owned copy, you'd have to pay about £7/$10 to unlock the ability to play online, or access some bonus levels/costumes/cars, etc.
'Project Ten Dollars', as it's sometimes called, is intended to discourage people from buying used copies of games by restricting access to certain aspects of the game, unless the second (or third, or fourth, etc) owner is willing to shell out the £7 or so on an online pass. Of course, publishers, in their mind, have a very good reason for doing this - when you buy a second hand game, none of the money from the sale goes to the people who made it, instead just being profit for the shop. And when a new game is on the shelf for £40 or £50, who can blame people for going for the pre-owned game, which is often marked up at least a fiver cheaper - sometimes even by as much as £20 or £30. As a way to recoup some of their losses, the money from the online passes does go to the developers and publishers of the game - but does deliberately harming pre-owned sales actually do the games industry more harm than good? Once the single-use code has been redeemed, the game loses a fair amount of its trade-in value, meaning people who only trade in their games in order to buy the latest big game get less money back, which therefore leaves them with less money to buy the latest game, which means they'll buy less new games, and means the industry as a whole sells even less.
However you feel about online passes, the French developer and publisher Ubisoft is planning to follow EA's lead, with their own Uplay Passport. Recently confirmed to be included with their upcoming cop-themed thriller, Driver: San Francisco, the game gets the dubious honour of being the first game to come with a single-use code to access the online mode, which will also grant you access to other special features - although quite what those are has yet to be revealed. It should set you back 800 Microsoft Points - about £6.80, and other games which require the Passport can be identified by the Uplay logo on the box.
Ubisoft take drastic steps to police the issue of pre-owned games.
Apparently, this pass won't be in all games - just in what Ubisoft (along with the rest of the games industry) irritatingly call their 'core' games. Which basically means ones they expect to appeal exclusively to that 18 to 35 male demographic they always go on about, and typically includes games like Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto and FIFA, along with the many other big budget games with thriving online modes - because everyone knows no women play games like that (!) In terms of Ubisoft games, that would mean the new Ghost Recon, Call of Juarez, Far Cry and Assassin's Creed are likely candidates along with Driver: San Francisco - games like Just Dance 3, Rabbids and Your Shape are unlikely to be affected. Should you be looking to buy any of the aforementioned games pre-owned, then - be aware! If you fancy playing online, you'll likely have to pay more.
