The Most Revolutionary Gameplay Aspects to Fighting GamesMaybe i'm just being Cynical

E.A. shut servers down, this much we know.
E.A. now require you to have the code from your brand new copy of whichever game to access the online multi-player side of things, or if you’ve bought pre-owned to then buy access to the online multi-player.
Both of these policies are wrong, but together they spell big money for E.A. at the expense of us gamers.

First off, surely if a game is packaged and sold advertising online multi-player, said game should contain online multi-player. Even if only a handful of gamers still populate the online game it should be kept running. Now, as someone that regularly browses games news sites and forums I find out about E.A. closing the servers but, there must be a whole lot of people that don’t frequent these sites and therefore have no inkling that a game is no longer playable online, get home pop in the game and ‘Bam!’ no online play, it says online on the box, but no, not any more. Enjoy your game, well the half you’ve got anyway.

Secondly, charging for the online access, this is just wrong. I recently bought FIFA11 brand new, happy days, or so I thought. Then realising I had to input the code for the multi-player I also realised that where i’d normally have also let my son play online FIFA in his room on his 360 i’d now have to purchase points to download the access to his console. Nice. £40 for a game I then can’t share properly with another member of the household.
Ah well, he can still play his mates on FIFA10. Oh, well he can for a year or so anyway before E.A. announce that they’re the next servers to be shut down.

Then what are we gamers left with, the last of the free, already unlocked multi-player E.A. titles are gone and we have 2 choices, buy brand new copies of all E.A. games (but it’ll cost you if you want to share it) or buy pre-owned and then pay for the extras, and this then continues in a cycle as new games release and old servers close, E.A. wins big and gamers lose out, paying more money for the same product, or, we stop buying these yearly updates to our favourite franchises, now there’s a thought.