However, are they really extracting more money from their customers if they are charging used gamers for online content?
No, they're trying to extract money from people who weren't their customers to begin with.
No, they're trying to extract money from people who weren't their customers to begin with.
I would guess that a good number of players who sell their old games use the money to buy new games. This move will definitely push the price of EA's used games down, I would guess by close to $10 for games with significant online content. Which means that EA's primary customers (the people buying the new games) now have $10 less to invest in their new game for every old game that they sell. I can't see people increasing their spend on new games to compensate for this, so the net result could be that EA get more money from used sales, which is more or less balanced out by getting less money from new sales.