Battlefield 3 has an online pass, sort of

Call of Duty Elite pissed off a lot of people – why should players have to pay for a social and statistical integration that we get for free in every other game? Capitalizing on that disillusionment, Battlefield 3 developers DICE responded with the Battlelog, which offers “powerful social tools, feeds and detailed player stats.” Cool. Kind of a given, and a smart business move, but for something like that to be considered an add-on shows how much we’ve lowered our expectations over the last few years.

Nonetheless, EA scored one against Activision – but now the goliath publisher have shot themselves in the foot, revealing what’s essentially a continuation of the publisher’s anti-used-game Project Ten Dollar initiative introduced last year. Speaking to GamerZines, DICE’s executive producer Patrick Bach said the game would “probably” need a register code for players to access online content, meaning if you’re buying the game used, prepare to add an extra $10 to that purchase. Bach tried to distinguish the code from an ‘online pass,’ justifying it as a means for DICE to pay for the game’s backend.

“The whole idea is that we’re paying for servers,” said Bach, “and if you create a new account there is a big process on how that is being handled in the backend. We would rather have you buy a new game than a used game because buying a used game is only a cost to us; we don’t get a single dime from a used game, but we still need to create server space and everything for you. We want people to at least pay us something to create this because we’re paying for it. It was actually a loss for us to have new players,” he continued. “Hopefully people understand why. It’s not to punish people. To us it’s compensation.”

Call me cynical, but this is a used game we’re talking about – the original purchaser will not need that server space again unless they buy another copy. Is Bach trying to suggest it costs $10 for every single account used to play Battlefield 3? Gee – I really hope they don’t sell 10 million copies, or they might be 100 million dollars up shit creek.