Online Passes, Good or Bad?

Online passes, the current initiative by games companies to get gamers to buy games new over pre-owned is a thorny subject to some people.

99% of the games I buy are new, my pre-owned buys are limited to the games I have a slight interest in but have no intention of paying the £40 price tag for.

Essentially the pass locks out specific gameplay functions, multiplayer in most cases, or added maps. Personally I don't believe it is needed to punish gamers for buying pre-owned, not everyone can rush out and buy the latest games at full price.

I can understand the idea behind it, when a game is bought new a percentage of the selling price goes back to the developers, when a game is bought pre-owned the developers see nothing of the sale.

Obviously developers want to get something for every copy of their game sold, and the passes help towards that.

But if I want to buy a game pre-owned, why should then have to pay out extra on top of that? Why should gamers who buy a game for the online aspect be forced to pay extra to go online?

I'll admit because of this my game collection is at a decent size, the majority if the games I have bought over the last few months have needed the pass for online play, and I could not bring myself to be responsible for causing someone else to pay extra to go online due to my trade in.