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  Online multi-player has changed alot for video games, it has become quite the investment to play online and I’m not talking about time. The latest trend I have noticed for online multi player games, is “Season Passes”. When you purchase one of these passes it entitles you to the majority of DLC coming down the pipe line for your game. 

  It’s also cheaper to buy this then all of the future DLC separately. Two things bother me here, your buying this pass before you have any idea what kind of DLC your going to get. It also feels like quite the investment already for a game you just spent $60 dollars on. Then there’s online passes, which you get automatically when you buy a game brand new. Yet, if you buy it used or rent the game….well your going to have to cough up $10 bucks just so you can play online. 

Developers defend this by saying “it helps us combat used games sales” or what they are now saying “It helps us maintain the servers”. This is all becoming one big headache for me and I think gamers in general. Sure you don’t have to buy any DLC or play online, but some games like Battlefield 3. People just get to play online, that’s why I rented it from Gamefly. I wanted to see if the online was better then MW3’s, but low and behold I needed to purchase an online pass to do so because I had rented it. EA you couldn't give me two free days online before you shoved that online pass in my face?

 I remember Dead Space 2 had an online pass but it gave me two free days to try out its online, why didn't Battlefield 3 have that? 

Now I gotta research which games are going to have online passes before I bother to rent them from Gamefly. It’s looking like a lot of them are, which is ridiculous and I hope game developers or rental services some how fix this.

Season Passes bother me a lot because they put too much pressure on me, it’s like every online game now is an investment. I can’t just hop from one to the other because it will cost me a fortune to keep up with all these map packs. I miss the simple days of when you got a game, whether it be new, used or rented. It had everything available for you to play to your hearts content. I remember when announced DLC for a game was exciting and breathed more life into my favorite games. Now DLC is announced before the game even hits store shelves, its expected and judged the minute you see it.

Sadly the only way any of this is going to change is if we speak with our wallets, if we stop buying all this DLC or online passes. Sadly I don’t think that is going to happen and I feel like its only going to get worse and worse. I hope some of my favorite game franchises don’t start to do this too….I’m looking at you gta and Halo.