Ubisoft confirms online pass

By Fred Dutton Published 15 July, 2011

Uplay Passport to cost $9.99.

As rumoured yesterday, Ubisoft has confirmed the impending arrival of an online pass for used copies of its games.

Dubbed the Uplay Passport, it will charge US gamers $9.99 for access to the online features of "many of Ubisoft's popular core games" when purchased second hand.

If you've bought the game new, you'll find a one-time use registration code included in the box to enable multiplayer modes and "exclusive bonus content".

Driver: San Francisco will be the first game to incorporate the system when it launches on 2nd September.

A UK price for the pass has not been confirmed at the time of writing.

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About Fred Dutton

Fred Dutton is Eurogamer's US news editor, based in Washington DC.

Read more articles from Fred by visiting the Fred Dutton archive page.

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Comments (52) Latest comment 10 months ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • byakuya83 #1 10 months ago

    Post deleted at 10:03:41 30-03-2012

  • davearnie #2 10 months ago

    Post deleted at 23:37:55 14-04-2012

  • captain_Carl #3 10 months ago

    Awesome. Means i can sell the online pass (which i have no intention of using) on ebay and make some money back on the cost of my game

    Thanks Ubi :)

  • Phishfood #4 10 months ago

    @davearnie
    Its tied to the gamertag on the 360. When I changed my xbox I kept the old hard drive and all my DLC and arcade titles worked just fine.

  • Phishfood #5 10 months ago

    This isn't so different from PC multiplayer games. The new game came with a key code that you typed in after installation, whereas second hand versions of the game came with the key you could not garantee if its still being used by someone. If the game was pirated then a valid key could be generated with a program and though it would fool the game you could only play the single player portion because only certain keys were valid for multiplayer.

  • alimokrane #6 10 months ago

    Sod off Ubisoft and anyone that follows this nonsense.

  • Ahskay #7 10 months ago

    Is that DRM-free?

  • ballshock #8 10 months ago

    Never played a Ubi online game, whatever........

  • Machetazo #9 10 months ago

    @10: doesn't that neccessitate a reprint, if that's true about expiring new passes? Which adds additional cost...

  • God_Octo #10 10 months ago

    My biggest worry is that they will keep forgetting to put them in the boxes- my copy of LA Noire had none of the codes in it for the 2 things I got for pre-ordering the game. I can see this happening on a regular basis.

  • metalangel #11 10 months ago

    @davearnie: Google online pass, you'll have EA's explanation for their pass. The pass enables the gamertag that registered the code to play that game on all consoles, and to all gamertags playing that game on the console where the code was registered.

  • Frankie_Lee #12 10 months ago

    I'd prefer if they just released the multiplayer as a separate download to be honest. Never even touched the SP on COD.

  • HyperTails #13 10 months ago

    I support Ubisoft in doint this as if you buy second hand you aren't supporting the industry. We, first hand buyers, shouldn't be carrying you and paying for your right to play online. Pay cash into funding games and support the industry like the rest of us.

    If you buy a game pre-owned for £34.99, but a brand new sealed copy is £39.99, you're just being cheap.

    I don't buy pre-owned, I only buy brand new as i'm not supporting the industry if I don't.

  • patchbox360 #14 10 months ago

    @HyperTails

    alot of people buy first hand games with traded in games, if you take away the second hand market you'll end up taking away from the first hand market which means less for developers.

  • talideon #15 10 months ago

    I've no problem with this, but I'd like if, as somebody who doesn't play multiplayer games, there was some way to recoup the extra cost of the of an online pass I'm never going to use.

  • RESIDENT_nEVILe #16 10 months ago

    I love games and gaming and more money for the industry is a good thing - but do they deserve it for doing fuck all? For inventing another online tax?

    Car manufacturers, book publishers, music publishers, electronics hardware manufacturers don't have the code to ensure that they get money from every physical resale of their product, and they thrive. They don't have the power to belittle the concept of ownership.

    Digital Distribution has become so widespread that publishers can't wait to take more money from us - one license, one player. Gone are the days when publishers relied on bricks and mortar to distribute and sell their product. In their eagerness to help ease us into this glorious age we get gimped physical copies that generate some tasty profit and wound used sales prices that are often used to offset the purchase of a new game.

    Never mind that with gaming it is all too easy to charge micro-transactions at every possible opportunity. Paid map packs, accessories and DLC are already bringing in money from second hand buyers, but that's not enough - they want every last penny. Plus this way they don't have to bother so much with pesky things like innovation and post release support. The money will just keep rolling in.

    So, we can look forward to a future of Digital Distribution price fixing, physical copies that can't be passed on or exchanged, shitty peer to Peer online, the endless sexing up and dumbing down of games to fit mass market models, publishers buying studios and then realising they don't have the vision to make the new acquisitions meet targets.

    I say we take to the streets! Burn our modems! Start an online petition (oh wait, my modem)! Talk utter bollocks that reeks of the fear of change and the resentment of savvy industry opportunists!

    Yeah, I'll do that last one.
    Edited by RESIDENT_nEVILe at 15/07/11 @ 22:30

  • smelly #17 10 months ago

    @captain carl - couldnt agree more .. I *HATE* playing games online.. so this news is great for me!

    AND it'll lower the price of the 2nd hand games...

    WIN - WIN!

  • smelly #18 10 months ago

    >but do they deserve it for doing fuck all?

    Like make the game?

    >Car manufacturers, book publishers, music publishers

    When you go into a book/music store and they ACTIVELY try to sell use the used version over the new one.. Then you can use that analogy.. When you can buy a 2nd hand car/book which is just as good as the brand new one.. Then you can use that analogy.

    Until then - you're comparing apples to oranges.

    In fact - it IS like buying a 2nd hand car.. in that the quality has deterioated (in that it no longer has online)

  • alcides #19 10 months ago

    Bargain bin games, they make anyway. Can't be bothered to play any of them. Does the sound not suck in their games since 6 years ago?

  • RESIDENT_nEVILe #20 10 months ago

    @smelly

    They got payed from the initial sale of the game. If the game is any good or offers a uniqueness then it will be worth holding on to. If it isn't worth holding on to I believe it should be in the owners right to recoup as much of their outlay as possible. Especially in an age where glowing sponsored reviews are released early, bad reviews are not forgotten and release day embargoes are common place. It's not like the industry plays fair all the time. If the market is flooded with used copies of a game, that says a lot about the game, imo.


    Are used game sales diverting money from the industry? Yep. Destroying the industry? Nope. Make games that are actually worth keeping. Don't churn out cookie cutter shite and expect it to sell gangbusters and have staying power.

    I grew up exchanging Master System, Megadrive games in swap shops. That makes me a relic, and my attitude to 'owning' a game is similarly archaic. I make no apologies for it. As for my analogies being shite, I can't argue with that :)
    Edited by RESIDENT_nEVILe at 15/07/11 @ 23:35

  • gjgjg #21 10 months ago

    I'm sure car manufacturers and electronic companies would introduce an equivalent 2nd hand 'tax' if they could.
    Anyway, in theory the more money they get the more likely new ip will be produced and bigger budgets for bigger games.

    Was it pes08 that did this kind of thing first? Except there was no buy in option... Just a block out

  • RESIDENT_nEVILe #22 10 months ago

    @gjgjg

    No doubt. I'm not holding any industry up as a paragon of virtue.

  • NewbieZilla #23 10 months ago

    Ah, a Driver game. So, they start out with a game no one should buy. Get it in there quietly, I see.

  • jumpdeveraux #24 10 months ago

    The cost of an individual playing online has already been factored into the original price. When they talk of charging a new user for the right to play online there is never mention of the fact the previous owner can no longer access those services - so it's a zero sum game - there can only ever be as many online players as those that purchased the original disc/download (as multiplayer is not sold separately).

    The explicit cost and additional effort to buy the ability to play online is a deterrent to second hand users buying a game with online support. That's not necessarily good as it means the original purchaser has dropped out of the online community and now the person picking it up second has also (they might just complete singleplayer and trade it in again).

    This could all lead to a more rapid decay of the size of communities for online games rather than supporting a vibrant community for as long as possible for a title. But then again the publisher will most likely have a nice sequel waiting for everybody so shortening the amount of time they have to provide infrastructure for a particular game post-launch couldn't be their plan... could it? ;-)

  • 32768Colours #25 10 months ago

    Frankly I think the games industry has an extremely over blown sense of entitlement. Aside from software, I can't think of any other range of consumer products that are so fiercely exempt from re-sale in such a transparently cynical and opportunistic fashion.

    I trade in games all the time because I love gaming but I'm not a collector so I don't care for having dozens of old games kicking around. I don't tend to buy 2nd hand games myself but if the ability to trade in games were ever to end it would seriously effect my capacity to purchase new games, as I fund my new purchases with trade-ins.

    There must be millions of other people who do the same as me, so I too believe that killing the 2nd hand market will have an adverse impact on the industry as a whole.

    The publishers have got a bloody great bee in their bonnet about this in the past few years simply because they see online-enabled consoles as an opportunity to extend the profitability of their products. Were that not the case, we wouldn't have seen so many stupid attempts to control what we do with games once we've bought them. Clearly EA found the perfect system in the online pass concept, and so every publisher is bound to get in on the act eventually.

    Sadly, there seems to be an awful lot of consumers who seem willing to play the apologist role for these massive corporations, perhaps to appear even-handed. But let's not be under any doubt here; this generation the games industry has invested an enormous amount of energy into limiting legitimate consumers' rights whilst having little or no impact on either piracy or for that matter, 2nd hand sales. The reality is its got nothing to with curbing these issues, its just another revenue stream with a handy excuse tacked on to help them get away with it.

  • Sunyavadin #26 10 months ago

    What's next? Will the motor vehicle industry start shipping cars where the tyres self-destruct the second the satnav detects that it has rolled onto a used car lot?

  • Craven #27 10 months ago

    Seeing as i wait for games to come down in price (which on current form is around 2 months after release) this doesn't really affect me much. And by the time i get round to playing it the game's probably worth about 50p anyway.

  • Notallowedhere #28 10 months ago

    Car manufacturers still have a revenue stream on spare parts. No other commercial good is so widely traded 2nd hand as games, almost everysingle shop that sells them new also sells 2nd hand. This isn't like a little 2nd had book or music shop. Retail are now making upto 35% of their profit for second hand sales...which is tax free, as they already paid tax on the new sales. I can understand why publishers are pissed off when shops offer pre-order 2nd hand games before a game has been released.

    I don't see these £10 DL as ripping off gamers but to get a share of the money that shops get. If anything it should drive down the cost of 2nd hand games, when you can at least choose if you want the extras.

  • Lord_BeeJee #29 10 months ago

    Upay pass

  • P1GEONPOO #30 10 months ago

    Please dont ever try to buy off fullmall/madeshopping or any other shitty spammer on EG. Thanks.

  • uknortherner2000 #31 10 months ago

    @P1GEONPOO

    To be fair, their after-sales support probably runs rings around EA, UbiShaft and all the other shitty nickel-and-diming publishers out there! ;)

  • P1GEONPOO #32 10 months ago

    But this is a gaming site not a handbag site!

  • Vergis69 #33 10 months ago

    These "Online pass" systems are a joke

    Another point... on the PSN anyway, these passes are displayed when the game is released and in no way does it mention you would have received a code if bought new. So you can guarantee some poor people are buying the pass not knowing they already have a code.

    Whats next? watch a 2nd hand movie and have to pay again for the last 20 mins?...

    Fucking disgusting.
    Edited by Vergis69 at 16/07/11 @ 18:14

  • Collymilad #34 10 months ago

    I love the way smelly gets downvoted for speaking the truth.

    He's right. 1. If you don't pay the developer, you're not entitled to anything, including the right to whinge about it. and 2. Comparing the 2nd hand market in games to cars/whatever is ridiculous and deep down everyone who uses that argument knows it.

    The whole "2nd hand games help people buy new games thing" doesn't really hold up either, as there's nothing tying those games purchases to any particular developer, so Dev A might still end up getting nothing.

    @resident_evil - they get ONE payment and TWO people have now had the game. The shop got paid for the "2nd" copy, instead of the dev. You honestly don't see any problem with that at all from the devs point of view? Thats one of the reasons the car analogy doesn't work. Games are far more fleeting and you are likely to have them for a much smaller period of time, so the impact is felt more.

    Basically, there's little point in even arguing about this. The people that are anti-online pass just want cheap games, and they really don't care that the devs only get paid once whilst multiple people experience the game.

    At the end of the day, they're not even stopping you from buying the game 2nd hand. They just have the nerve to ask you to pay a fraction of the total price for the game they made if you want to play online. What a bloody cheek eh?
    Edited by Collymilad at 16/07/11 @ 18:42

  • RobTheBuilder #35 10 months ago

    Oddly. If Nintendo refrain from using this kind of cheap money making tax, maybe they will actually, and ironically end up with the most progressive online games around.

  • layleeloo #36 10 months ago

    We saw it coming EA sets many trends and when people pay it - other follow suit. Funny really - same thing happened with the robbing bastards wanting £55 for cod games. Now, more games like Fifa 12 have over inflated rrp's. When will people learn that simply protesting vocally doesnt work. If people didnt pay these charges - more companies wouldn't try implementing them. We only have ourselves to blame (after EA of course)

  • sajtion #37 10 months ago

    if there is one person who bought online pass speak now. they should really ask to get percentage of the resale cost and leave gamers to enjoy their games.

  • bemaniac #38 10 months ago

    I buy pc games. Where the hell am I going to get second hand pc games anyway. None of the shops around here do that so I think I'll be just fine. Glad I'm not a console gamer they tend to pay £15 more for new releases and now this if they buy it for £2.50 less from game second hand!

  • bemaniac #39 10 months ago

    So annoying that the only games people at my place of work know about and talk about all the time are MW2 and BF3 and Fifa!!!! Charge those morons not people who experiment with new games. Shame ubisoft don't like releasing new concepts. Someone asked me 'how is the campaign mode in that game' when I was talking about Katamari Damacy the other day! I made him feel like an idiot but he'll still say it next time.

  • Mister-Wario #40 10 months ago

    "The whole "2nd hand games help people buy new games thing" doesn't really hold up either, as there's nothing tying those games purchases to any particular developer, so Dev A might still end up getting nothing".

    I don't think this is entirely fair. There have been a number of games, like Resistance, Infamous and Bioshock that I got cheap and thoroughly enjoyed, and I'm most likely going to get the sequels now. Heck, I got the Bioshock 2 Limited Edition for my birthday. The point is, I wouldn't have checked those titles out if they weren't cheap.

  • eviroboy #41 10 months ago

    Yeah the passes have expiry dates...of like 2022, don't really think that a major problem in all honesty. Skynet will have taken over by then anyway.

  • peacefuloutrage #42 10 months ago

    All this is is horrible day one DLC. When will publishers learn to reign in their budgets and give developers more freedom instead of putting the screws to paying customers. In years past, a person who owned more than one TV was considered wealthy. Now customers with multiple systems, which isn't as uncommon as it may seem are punished.

    This doesn't even speak to diminishing the quality of the product to reclaim sales that don't belong to them. If I rented one of these games to see if it was worth the money, I would just see a broken game, not think "Oh, I need to enter an unlock code to get permission to access content I paid for!". With the billions the industry is raking in they would like us to think that they are in dire straights.

  • butler` #43 10 months ago

    r o f l

  • butler` #44 10 months ago

    it's moves like this that will be the nail in the coffin for bricks and mortar retail

  • s11mmy #45 10 months ago

    I think these companies didn't realise how big multi player would become. It was always supposed to be an add on to the single player but now the multi player portion is bigger than the single player in some games and in some cases extends the life of the game. Unfortunatley, this is at the expense of the developers who have to maintain their servers and so they push the cost back onto the gamers.

  • lockload #46 10 months ago

    It should say if you buy it new and only one person/gamertag plays it what about families with children?

  • Collymilad #47 10 months ago

    Haha. -4 you people make me laugh.

  • digitalash #48 10 months ago

    I'd pay £9.99 not to play a Driver game.

  • james-mw3-mw3 #49 10 months ago

    Oh well, guess this gives another good reason not to buy used ubisoft games ... ;(

  • Spong #50 10 months ago

    "Awesome. Means i can sell the online pass (which i have no intention of using) on ebay and make some money back on the cost of my game

    Thanks Ubi :)    "

    Damn, why didn't I think of doing that with my Dead Space 2 online pass? Oh wait...Dead Space 2's online multiplayer is shit. But still, this means AC: Revelations will no doubt have a pass, I'll sell that instead.

    /online multiplayer is shit

  • geeza2020 #51 10 months ago

    Devs love crying about this shit dont they. You got your money from the first hand sale. End of. Now stop crying and fuck off and make a game people actually WANT to keep. Your sense of deranged twisted entitlement to money that isnt yours is disgusting.

  • Spekingur #52 10 months ago

    Yeah, so, Ubisoft. If I am going to be paying for an online pass you should get your networking technology working properly.

    Example: Settles 7 on the PC requires you to log on to Ubisoft network. This is used for updating your "levels" and is supposed to create a better matchmaking system. Here is the "awesome" part. Me and my friend were going to play multiplayer but even though we were in the same room, hooked to the same router we had to go through Ubisofts service. That service seems to check every connections ping (as far as I can guess) and then decide what games it shows you can connect to. So, we couldn't find each other (or any other internet game) even with firewalls off, correctly forwarded ports on the router, etc. - because our ping was probably too high, because we were in a country too far away from the servers. Genius stuff going on there.