"The Question: Is Arkham City's 'Catwoman Pass' too much?"
I'll answer the questions posed here (though my answers should be easy to predict for anyone who has been paying attention).
So the first question, from the header: "Is Arkham City's 'Catwoman Pass' too much?"
Of course it is too much. That should be blatantly obvious. The fact that it isn't obvious to a lot of people (not the least of whom are Warner Bros. Interactive and Rocksteady themselves) is a big part of the problem. However, even though it's clearly a horrible thing that shouldn't have happened in the first place, that won't stop other devs/pubs from quickly following in their footsteps.(EDIT)[1](/EDIT) Then the whole thing will become an "accepted practice" by most gamers, and they will wonder why it was such a big deal "back in the day" and why some people were so pissed off by it. Then something even worse than this will be unveiled in the future and the whole cycle will just start all over again, with the exact same end result as before. That's how it has invariably gone since the beginning, whenever any sort of asinine thing like this has come up.
"Of course, there are those who will say, 'I'm online and buying new, so it's not a big deal.' Are they right?"
No, they are not. They may be apathetic (well, either that or they've just ingested too much of the Kool-Aid being force-fed to them by the game industry at large), but that doesn't make them correct. As for me, it doesn't matter that I already have this particular game pre-ordered and will be getting it new and thus won't be directly affected by this. It still pisses me off, regardless.
"If you're looked after, does it matter about anyone else?"
Well, it's all fun and games until you're not the one who is "looked after."(EDIT)[1](/EDIT) Then you're SOL and it's other people's turn to point and laugh at you because they're "looked after" and you're not. This is why, as owsf2000 has said repeatedly, we should protest this kind of thing, even if it doesn't directly affect us or doesn't seem "so bad" or whatever. That said, however, I don't think just raising a stink about it is enough by itself, because the big devs/pubs certainly don't listen, and about half of all gamers just seem to end up thinking you're crazy and/or stupid for ranting about it as well. And most people (myself included, in this particular case) are too weak-willed to flat-out boycott a game like this, even if this aspect of it enrages them. In fact, these days a lot of gamers just scoff at the idea of boycotts in general, as though any and all boycotters (or merely the complainers, even if they're not boycotting anything) are just whiny, entitled babies who don't actually ever have any legitimate grievances. (The Destructoid comment section of this very article is proof enough of this.)
"In lieu of an actual online mode in Batman, is Rocksteady correct to section off a portion of the single-player mode?"
Absolutely not, in no way, shape, or form. Except for sheer greed, there was no reason whatsoever for them to do it. Sure, they can and will and already have come up with plenty of bullshit justifications and rationalizations for it, but those don't matter. Well, I'd like to say they don't matter, but as I said above, a lot of gamers are actually falling for the nonsense about how used games are the devil or whatever. As I've said before, and as I'll probably say many times again, I will not ever understand why lately so many in the game industry seem to feel like they are entitled to a cut from used game sales at all (even though they are not) and are pulling all of these odious schemes out of their asses to get that cut, no matter what. And really, this is something that has only come up in the past two or three years or so, at most. When, where, why, and how did it suddenly become the case that second hand games are evil, and who started it all? (If I had to make a guess, I'd say it was EA, but I can't be certain of that. Either them or Activision, probably.)
"Is this the start of games locking even more content behind codes, and does it really matter in the grand scheme of things?"
God I certainly hope not, though I'm sure it will indeed become more prevalent now that this game has broken the ice. And if it does, I'll be ever more tempted to just join Mord in his overall boycott of further generations of games, and just stick to playing older games. Maybe finally work through my backlog, rather than continually increasing it in size.
(And, as always, the majority of commenters on Destructoid have proven themselves yet again to be the absolute nadir of all the gaming sites that I read. No surprise there at all.)
(EDIT)
[1] - For example, just fast forward from this post another four months and see what BioWare is doing with Mass Effect 3. In that case, everyone has to pay for the Day 1 DLC, across the board, regardless of whether the game is bought new or not, which makes it even worse than the crap mentioned here.
(/EDIT)
So the first question, from the header: "Is Arkham City's 'Catwoman Pass' too much?"
Of course it is too much. That should be blatantly obvious. The fact that it isn't obvious to a lot of people (not the least of whom are Warner Bros. Interactive and Rocksteady themselves) is a big part of the problem. However, even though it's clearly a horrible thing that shouldn't have happened in the first place, that won't stop other devs/pubs from quickly following in their footsteps.(EDIT)[1](/EDIT) Then the whole thing will become an "accepted practice" by most gamers, and they will wonder why it was such a big deal "back in the day" and why some people were so pissed off by it. Then something even worse than this will be unveiled in the future and the whole cycle will just start all over again, with the exact same end result as before. That's how it has invariably gone since the beginning, whenever any sort of asinine thing like this has come up.
"Of course, there are those who will say, 'I'm online and buying new, so it's not a big deal.' Are they right?"
No, they are not. They may be apathetic (well, either that or they've just ingested too much of the Kool-Aid being force-fed to them by the game industry at large), but that doesn't make them correct. As for me, it doesn't matter that I already have this particular game pre-ordered and will be getting it new and thus won't be directly affected by this. It still pisses me off, regardless.
"If you're looked after, does it matter about anyone else?"
Well, it's all fun and games until you're not the one who is "looked after."(EDIT)[1](/EDIT) Then you're SOL and it's other people's turn to point and laugh at you because they're "looked after" and you're not. This is why, as owsf2000 has said repeatedly, we should protest this kind of thing, even if it doesn't directly affect us or doesn't seem "so bad" or whatever. That said, however, I don't think just raising a stink about it is enough by itself, because the big devs/pubs certainly don't listen, and about half of all gamers just seem to end up thinking you're crazy and/or stupid for ranting about it as well. And most people (myself included, in this particular case) are too weak-willed to flat-out boycott a game like this, even if this aspect of it enrages them. In fact, these days a lot of gamers just scoff at the idea of boycotts in general, as though any and all boycotters (or merely the complainers, even if they're not boycotting anything) are just whiny, entitled babies who don't actually ever have any legitimate grievances. (The Destructoid comment section of this very article is proof enough of this.)
"In lieu of an actual online mode in Batman, is Rocksteady correct to section off a portion of the single-player mode?"
Absolutely not, in no way, shape, or form. Except for sheer greed, there was no reason whatsoever for them to do it. Sure, they can and will and already have come up with plenty of bullshit justifications and rationalizations for it, but those don't matter. Well, I'd like to say they don't matter, but as I said above, a lot of gamers are actually falling for the nonsense about how used games are the devil or whatever. As I've said before, and as I'll probably say many times again, I will not ever understand why lately so many in the game industry seem to feel like they are entitled to a cut from used game sales at all (even though they are not) and are pulling all of these odious schemes out of their asses to get that cut, no matter what. And really, this is something that has only come up in the past two or three years or so, at most. When, where, why, and how did it suddenly become the case that second hand games are evil, and who started it all? (If I had to make a guess, I'd say it was EA, but I can't be certain of that. Either them or Activision, probably.)
"Is this the start of games locking even more content behind codes, and does it really matter in the grand scheme of things?"
God I certainly hope not, though I'm sure it will indeed become more prevalent now that this game has broken the ice. And if it does, I'll be ever more tempted to just join Mord in his overall boycott of further generations of games, and just stick to playing older games. Maybe finally work through my backlog, rather than continually increasing it in size.
(And, as always, the majority of commenters on Destructoid have proven themselves yet again to be the absolute nadir of all the gaming sites that I read. No surprise there at all.)
(EDIT)
[1] - For example, just fast forward from this post another four months and see what BioWare is doing with Mass Effect 3. In that case, everyone has to pay for the Day 1 DLC, across the board, regardless of whether the game is bought new or not, which makes it even worse than the crap mentioned here.
(/EDIT)