Massive Poll: Catwoman Pass

Tuffcub 131 Comments

Holy PR disaster Batman! After months of teasing us with the frisky feline Catwoman, Warner Brothers have added a pass system that will lock her out of the game for those who buy a pre-owned copy and, more importantly, anyone who does not have their Xbox or PS3 connected to the Internet.

Until now publishers have always used the argument that online passes are there to support server costs. Batman Arkham City has no online element so the pass confirms what we’ve known all along – it’s to stop gamers reselling or buying a pre-owned copy.

Those who do buy a pre-owned copy and wish to play as Catwoman will have to pay £7.99 for a pass.

Rocksteady have repeatedly stated that the Catwoman missions represent about ten percent of the game and you can play her character in the challenge rooms (but there are no Catwoman specific rooms). Batman Arkham City has a RRP of £49.99, ten percent of that is £4.99 – rather ironic that Warner Brothers making you pay extra for a character who is a thief.

It’s time to get clicking and let us know what you think of this new tactic. You have until midnight Sunday to vote and the results will be published on Monday.

 

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131 Comments

  1. Let me get this right….. if I buy a new Batman game for £40 and Catwoman is in there then that’s all right isn’t it?!?!?

    (I am still currently reading the other post but God it’s over 100 post!)

    • Yes. Buy it new and you get Catwoman, but it second hand then you’ll probably need to buy the code.

    • Yes. This affects pre-owned buyers and renters only.
      Oh, also the borrowers, which is a bit harsh. Picking on the little man!

      • Do you have tiny friends borrowing your games?

      • Whew thanks guys I just agree with CB of what I was reading and never expected to see these comments harsh!
        In short and my opinion there’s nothing wrong with it at least the game itself is not £47.99 (or in this case for the RRP – £54.99)
        It’s the normal price with just a minor DLC at £40 (this is happening all over the place nowadays)
        Going to vote now and would love to see how this turns out!

      • All my friends are tiny, relatively speaking. ;-)

      • This also affects first-time buyers without connection to the Internet.

      • RRP is £50 according to Play.com

      • You ‘tiny’ frieds, the ones who borrow have absolutely no right to complain. If they want to play as Catwoman they’ll have to pay the £8 – which in itself isn’t much for a game.

        However I disagree completely with idea for passes on singleplayer games, it’s totally ridiculous and what with the people who haven’t hooked their PS3’s up to the internet? Just because you have internet, doesn’t mean you have the space (or wireless) to make it happen. Stupid.

      • Well said Maneorix, well said…

    • Only if your PS3 is connected to the internet, so you can redeem the code that comes with the game. If you buy the game new, and your PS3 is not connected to the internet, then you will not be able to redeem the code, therefore no Catwoman for you!

      • So you may as well buy it second-hand in that case and save yourself some money.

  2. Could see this poll coming. Easy choice for me ;)

    • I wonder what you will vote for ;)

      • *tries his best poker face* I’m all for this new approach from developers. Long may it continue! :D

  3. I imagine this could be somewhat one-sided.

  4. I voted for unacceptable, since the way this has been handled as a whole is a complete joke. It’s a sad route to see the industry taking.

    Having said that, I’m buying new and at launch. In a month the game will have dropped in price far enough for this to be somewhat moot, and a negligible or non-existent step up over pre-owned prices if you shop around. In the UK this is much less of an issue compared with other countries that have a harder line with the RRP.

    So I’m very surprised by the vitriol this is seeing in the UK.

    • Agreed. The way the Catwoman character has been hyped up by the PR people & developers, it’s almost (almost…) like the rug has been pulled from under the gamers feet. If, however they hadn’t announced it and then gone “there is also some exclusive Catwoman content for those who by new…” then that wouldn’t be so bad.

    • Me too, hopefully lots of other will have too.

  5. I’m a little undecided. I never buy pre-owned and although I dont agree with what they are doing with the online passes, I wouldnt mind if they got some money from the retailers rather than getting the extra money from the consumers pocket.

    I dont ever see that happening though so i’d rather passes were done away with all together. The devs might feel like they want more money but we’re hardly rolling in money either.

    • I think one of the more important issues here though is that you’d be missing out on offline content if you have no internet connection to activate over though.

      • Yeah, I would agree that is more severe a problem. However, id say this is the case in the majority of gaming these days with many PC games requiring you to be online to install the game, consoles like the PSP GO and OnLive etc… it all seems to be heading that way regardless of these passes.

  6. As i have mentioned before, i don’t like online passes, but i do see the point in the dev recouping costs for the upkeep of servers for multiplayer elements.

    To shoehorn some kind of ‘pass’ element into a singleplayer experience is just unacceptable as far as i am concerned. Especially when there are specific trophies that relate to those segments of the game.

    It’s almost criminal.

  7. Huhuhuh! you said massive poll…teehehehe!

    • I`m so sorry, I dont know what came over me…

    • Everyone loves Tuffcub’s massive poll! Right?

  8. Also I would say there is a lot of entitlement being thrown around regarding this issue, some of it from devs and some of it from the gamers. Unfortunately, the entitlement side of it is what makes a lot of responses about this subject (from both sides) so ugly.

  9. Perhaps this would be more acceptable with new IPs or with small indy developers, else it’s hard for new IPs to break the market. But with Batman? No.

    • I think you’re right. My wife pointed out a minute ago how last month I was saying people should buy games new to support the developer, but I was talking about small devs who are still building a name for themselves. Arkham City is bound to sell millions of copies and be a GOTY candidate so I think a few sales lost to the second hand market is pretty trivial.

      • Exactly. Didn’t someone like Ubisoft recently state that they were now only going to concentrate on their AAA titles, due to the cost and risk of releasing new IPs. This will be bad for us gamers. So whilst I don’t like it, I could understand it more if it were for new IPs from big developers, or anything by small developers. But Codies or Activision etc etc, I have no sympathy for them, sorry. As I said yesterday I don’t know any other product where the “maker” gets more profit when it is sold on.

        Batman is a bad example and doesn’t do them any favours, because is a single player game (as far as I know) and people without internet are going to miss out on content they’ve basically paid for. Not to mention more space on our HDDs, although it’s probably just be a key to access the content.

        Why not release more DLC, then people can buy that to give them extra cash, but they’ve not having to reduce the main game, or penalise someone for buying second hand.

        Also, do game retailers moan that they lose out on digital sales because of the PSN Store? Not that I’ve heard, but it seems they’ve taken reasonable steps to work around this, buy allowing us to buy digit games/content from the highstreet. Whereas developers are asking to be paid for someone twice for the same bit of work.

  10. I think that developers should get a cut of the revenue from the pre-owned market. I think that it’s a shame that it’s being implemented this way – they should hammer out a deal with the pre-owned retailers instead of directly penalising gamers (especially those with offline consoles).

    • If it’s a single player game, why should they? Authors, film studios and recording artists (that list could go on and on too) get nothing out of a secondary sale, so what makes the games industry special?

      That’s not meant to sound confrontational with yourself zom, I’m just posing a relevant question :)

    • Developers should NOT get a cut of the pre owned market. My god, are you people insane?

      It’s MY GAME, I WILL do whatever I want. What’s next, Apple putting a code on the “iPod” section of the iPhone so once you sell it to someone else they have to pay to unlock it if they wanna listen to music.

      • If it’s offline, then fair enough, but if it is an online game, you are playing YOUR game on THEIR servers.

      • Erm most games don’t even have dedicated servers. So what?
        That online spot was mine but seeing as I don’t have the game anymore, someone else is using that spot so it makes no difference. Online or offline. Developers are just being greedy. IMO they’re doing this because COD this gen is huge and most ppl just want to play COD so other games from devs are not meeting sales from the previous gen.

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