You're actually not that far off. The only reason why publishers like EA opted for online passes was because game sales revenue wasn't meeting the goals to become marginally profitable. People call this nickel and diming or eye gouging, but it's more along the lines of making up for lost sales thanks to outside revenue circles created by retailers like GameStop and excluding publishers altogether. DRM on the xbox one was the first step to fixing all this. It would have been a considerably better environment for developer's futures, for publishers, for consumers, and gamers, all at once. Development studios would get more chances than being closed out without notice. You can't excuse a bad game, but you can always get a second chance. Publishers would see increased revenue. A sale would be a sale, no matter how low prices dipped. This would have allowed them to fund current studios, or open new studio branches. Consumers would benefit with lower prices brought on by a wider game distribution via redeemable code licenses among different retailers with unlimited stock; generating competition and potential sales outside microsofts own store. And gamers would benefit with fresh IPs in the coming years thanks to the newly opened studios, instead of seeing the same "sure thing" publishers resort to, to make guaranteed money (I don't need to remind anyone how many Call of Duty games have been released). All that aside, I wouldn't blame EA to retract that information and not only reinstate online passes but also make them more expensive.it only makes sense if we're just going back to the same thing we've done this generation.