Guest Writer: Online Passes

Unless you’ve been completely avoiding the Internet recently you can probably tell that some people aren’t all that happy about online passes and first purchaser codes. Of course this typically comes from the consumer point of view. In this guest piece hotpotgamer takes a look at it from the retailer’s perspective.

Working in retail I have to put up with things I wouldn’t usually like. I have to stick up for products or services that, outside of work, I might not be interested in. One of the main things that seems to annoy myself and other people more than most at the moment is the Online Access Key or Online Pass. It’s called many things by many different publishers, but it all boils down to the same thing. If you want to play that product online, you have to pay for the privilege. Whether it be through buying the product brand new, or by purchasing a code for your pre-owned copy, it’s going to cost.

Its obvious that it all came about to stop the pre-owned market. Straight away it wasn’t an endearing decision from the customers or even the retailers points of view. As a customer it meant you were having to buy games brand new, when perhaps you used to wait a few weeks for a cheaper second hand copy. Alternatively you still got the pre-owned copy and then had to fork out another fiver for the online pass. It also meant that you got less on your game when you went to trade it in; stores know the game uses a code, and don’t want to pay as much for a game which might not be able to be played online.

As a retailer you have to take a position that makes you look like the bad guy, as the customer always seems to blame the retailer. I work in a store, and as the face of that store you have to take the brunt of it. It gets easier over time, but it’s difficult to explain to different people every single day. You just have to tell them the situation and offer them the PSN card, or the Xbox Live points so they can play online.

[drop]At the end of the day I have always felt that the approach that’s happening nowadays from the publishers is hurting the customer more than the retail sector. It was obviously aimed at the retail sector in the first place, yet as usual it’s the working man that gets hit in the pocket. The retailers aren’t going to let it cost them money, and that is what was always going to happen. The structure has changed so that the customer has to make the choice whether or not they want to fork out that extra money.

Recently it was announced that in Batman Arkham City, you couldn’t play as the promised Catwoman character without the one off code. Yes the code comes with a new copy, but Catwoman’s still has to be downloaded. It wouldn’t be so bad if this character hadn’t been promised for so long, just to be snatched away at the last minute.

What about the loyal customers who aren’t online? And there are plenty, trust me. How are they going to get the stuff that was promised to them for all that time? Publishers seem to be forgetting the offline community. I rarely sell any special editions to those customers any more, and they are getting more and more disillusioned with it all.  I understand that it’s done to get people to go online, but there are many people like those in the more rural areas that simply don’t want it, or cannot generate the internet speeds to make getting a console online worth it. They are the ones who should be able to trade their games in for more, as they haven’t used the online key, yet they are being made to suffer as they won’t get the better price.

At the end of it all, I am selling more new releases. In that respect it has worked. But I am also trading less things in, and ultimately selling less second hand stuff.  Yet what most people seem don’t seem to realise is that there is simply no profit in new release products. People moan about going into places and being sold extra products, but that’s due to having to sell the higher margin products to get the money in to buy more copies of new releases. Pre-owned always has been and always will be the main money maker for the retailers and, sooner rather than later, the chain of events will lead to retailers putting prices up more and more.

We recently saw Asda slightly change their pricing structure for new releases, as they have suddenly realised people aren’t going in and buying a game with their weekly shopping, they are just going in and buying a game and going. Obviously this was costing them money, and now the prices are more in line with the High Street retailers.  I don’t really know where it’s going to end, and it’s obviously worrying from a career point of view, but for the most part, I just want the customers to be able to buy what they want without being punished in the wallet.