"Any game that rips off honest Americans with the Online Pass scam deserves to die."

That's a little harsh, isn't it?

Not to me, no. I feel very strongly about this. No other industry claims with such great manipulation that the used market is killing them. Right now, there are over 5,000 used iPod Touches for sale on Ebay. That number does not include all other types of iDevices.

When was the last time you heard Apple scream that the used iDevice Market was killing them, and to make up for lost profits they were going to deactivate all used iPod Touches sold and demand money for their reactivation? The used car business, the used TV business, the used electronic business in general is massive. Yet I can not recall a single company willing to demand profits from sales of their used products.

The auto industry was smart, and began a buyback program on their used cars. They buy them cheap, and re-sell them as certified pre-owned. It is a win-win situation for everyone involved. The video game industry, however, demands to profit off of used sales. They are not entitled to any profit after the initial sale, and never provided any evidence that the used market is harmful to them.

To put this scam in place, which harms innocent gamers, is enough for me to blacklist their company. EA, THQ, SONY and Ubisoft have all been blacklisted by me, and I refuse to support them in any way, shape or form. I even support pirating their games that have any Online Pass functionality in them, without resorting to that measure myself of course.

You may say that by pirating their games you are hurting the developer more than the publisher. To that I say, this Online Pass scam hurts innocent gamers for the sake of undeserved profit. When Samsung demands we pay them money to activate our recently purchased used HDTV, and Miramax demands we pay them to unlock the movie in a recently purchased used DVD, people will be sorry they didn't stand up and fight sooner.

This is nothing but a horrible scam to rip you off. They are not guaranteed any profit off of subsequent sales of a single product, and demanding they be paid in order to unlock content that you already paid for should be illegal. Until the cease this scam, I will never spend another dime buying any of their games new. If I want to play them, I will buy it used.

Heck, I know of groups forming right now that are spreading the word on how to pirate these games, with plans to send the numbers to the company to show them how many sales they lost by using the Online Pass. Whose to say if those people would have bought the game in the first place, but one thing I know for sure is that many of my closest friends have already begun pirating simply because of the Online Pass.

It is their way of fighting back. And I support them. They haven't spent a dime on any game with any sort of Online Pass. Yet they buy everything else at the store. I know it sounds phony, but it is true. We as consumers are in control, not them. We decide which company lives and dies, not them. If we don't spend money on their products, then they have no money to survive. It is a simply concept and I am glad to see so many of my friends using it.

You don't have to buy the game, you know.

San Francisco is Gay? Nobody has ever told you that before?

Vespas and Toyota Priuses are usually the vehicle of choice here, not muscle cars.

Got it. I guess it was just so obvious I couldn't see it.