Across multiple interviews these last couple days at E3 2013, EA representatives have denied their rumoured push for DRM implementation in the next-generation, admitted that Online Pass was a mistake and claim to be happy with the second-hand sales market today.
Electronic Arts chief operating officer Peter Moore told Polygon this in response to speculation that EA wanted DRM;
Absolutely incorrect. As the guy who is the chief operating officer of Electronic Arts I can tell you that EA did not aggressively lobby for the platform holders to put some gating function in there to allow or disallow used games. I am on record as being a proponent of used games. I like the ecosystem. I like the fact that it’s kept pricing at a good level for eight years. I like the fact that someone can buy a physical game and see some equity in that game. That keeps GameStop vibrant and they are a great launch and marketing partner for us.
He went on to state;
We will figure out what we need to do. I’m not trying to back-pedal but this thing just happened and we need to reconvene and hear what people think and talk to our retail partners and our first party partners. We had no idea what Sony was going to announce. We’ll reconvene next week and figure it all out.
On the point of Online Passes – which EA recently discontinued – Moore candidly admitted;
It just wasn’t resonating with the consumer. It just wasn’t consumer friendly. It was hard work and it was as much work for the guy who would never trade his game in, even though we gave him some digital content, because you’re punching numbers in […] Online Pass was more trouble to the consumer than it was worth. It was a mistake. The consumer’s feedback was that this thing gets in the way of a good experience so let’s get rid of it.
Finally, EA Games label boss Patrick Söderlund echoed this sentiment to Eurogamer;
…And we’re not doing that because we talked to people, our fans and our players, and they said, ‘listen, we don’t want to play our games like this.’ We have to listen to them and we removed it. It’s that simple. We don’t have a problem with second-hand sales as they are today. We clearly articulated our stance when we abandoned Online Pass.
