From almost the moment of its unveiling back in 2010, EA's controversial policy of charging buyers of preowned games an extra $10 to access online features has drawn outright ire from customers. That didn't stop EA from expanding the system to all of its online games and even some single-player games, though. So it's a bit surprising that EA has now decided to completely discontinue the program for all upcoming and current games.

EA announced a few weeks ago that it would be discontinuing Online Passes in upcoming games. But savvy NeoGAF posters recently noticed that the Online Passes for many previous EA games had also been reduced to a bargain price of $0 on Xbox Live. EA has now confirmed that it will be eliminating the Online Pass fee for all current games on all platforms via updates rolling out over the next few weeks.

Why the about-face? EA VP of Corporate Communications Jeff Brown was blunt in an interview with Game Informer. "It never really caught on," he said. "People didn't like it. People told us that they didn't like it and you know, we went through a cycle and we're about to put out some new games and we just decided not to do that anymore."

The Online Pass system brought in $10 million to $15 million in new revenue for EA in its first year, a pretty modest sum for a company that makes over a billion dollars in purely digital sales annually. It seems like that small bit of cash wasn't enough to justify the decreased online player numbers and bad PR associated with the program. The monetary infusion also apparently wasn't enough to prevent the shutdown of 14 of EA's less popular online game servers last year, either.

Rather than milking used game buyers, EA seems to have realized it can make much more money selling small items to players through microtransactions. The popular "Ultimate Team" feature for FIFA 12 brought in $108 million for the company in a single year, and the program has since expanded to other EA Sports games. Microtransactions have also been creeping into single-player EA games like Dead Space 3 of late, and the company recently had to walk back executive comments that it would introduce them in all of its future games.

Keep in mind that current unconfirmed reports suggest Microsoft could be building a small retailer fee into used game sales on the Xbox One, revenue which will be shared with the game's publisher. If this is true, it could help partially fill the revenue gap left behind by the Online Pass system in a way that doesn't direct customer ire directly toward EA.

Of course, today's news is of little comfort to used game buyers who already paid $10 to access online features for their current EA games (and it seems doubtful that EA will be offering them a refund). And EA is only one publisher; companies like Sony, Ubisoft, and Warner Bros. have shown no signs of wavering in their commitment to similar programs. Still, it's good to see that customer resistance to these programs, both via online forums and via customers' wallets, can eventually have an effect on the policies of big publishers.