In today’s news, pigs fly, snow falls in Hell, and EA announces that they won’t be attaching Online Passes to Syndicate when it ships out later this month.
The publisher has made the unexpected decision due to the game’s co-op multiplayer being a major feature.
“We want as little resistance or barriers to entry as possible,” EA Partners boss Jeff Gamon told Eurogamer. “The co-op is equal billing in this. We wanted everyone who owns a copy of the game to have access to the entire product.”
According to Gamon, games put out by the EA Partners division aren’t necessarily subject to EA’s general policy about Online Passes, including Portal 2 and Crysis 2, both of which did not include one. Although EA Partners managed the development of Syndicate, however, the game is published by EA.
“Under normal circumstances it would have had an online pass, but because it didn’t have competitive multiplayer and because we wanted as many people as possible to be playing co-op, we got away with it,” said Gamon.
“Maybe another reason for not having the Online Pass is we were confident in the scope of the online game.
“There are nine maps. It’s hard to say, but just to play through the maps once on normal is a good six, seven hours. To progress your character and upgrade a few weapons is a heap of content. That and the single-player campaign means hopefully we won’t see much in the way of early second hand sales and rentals.”
The game is out 24 February on PC, Xbox, and PS3.
Syndicate
