EA to start charging for Online play with used games

[TonyTheTiger]

This makes me think of another question. Are they basing sales on physical copies or implied license to the game? This isn't taking into account rips and pirate copies which don't count in this argument since they are not original media.

Day 1, some dude buys a game, takes it home, plays the shit out of it, but gets bored a few months later and trades it into a store, gives it to a friend, sells it, whatever, he no longer has possession of the game disc.

Day 91, second-hand owner pops the disc in and tries to play. The original owner no longer has the ability to play the game since he doesn't have the disc. How does the company really lose money on the person playing that same disc second-hand when they were already paid the first time, and weren't going to get a penny out of the second owner anyway. They apportioned their infrastructure to support the game being played on their servers based on sales numbers. No piracy has occured here, no theft from the company. How is this hurting them?

...ok, that may be a little hard to follow, but I hope the point can be seen.

I figure it's physical copies. I don't think it has as much to do with publishers hating the mere concept of used games as much as they tend to have a problem with GameStop selling used copies of the game from day 2 for a mere $5 discount. People walking into a GameStop looking for a copy of a game released that week are planning to spend $50-$60 and would have likely bought a new copy had the clerk not pushed a $45-$55 used copy that just came in. This system is designed to promote the sale of new copies during that relevant period by rendering GameStop's token discount meaningless.

In that sense, it really does hurt them since instead of GameStop selling 100 new copies like they ordinarily would, they're selling 80 new copies and 20 of those copies a second time once they're traded back in. I don't know how much of an effect it has overall but it's apparently enough of an annoyance to start a fight over.