In a move that should surprise no one, DICE executive producer Patrick Bach says Battlefield 3 will "probably" use EA's online pass program that requires people who purchase the title from used game retailers to pony up a little extra cash to access online multipayer.

Speaking to GamerZines, Bach admitted he thinks EA is charging consumers who buy the game secondhand an additional fee to play online, and defended the policy.

"The whole idea is that we're paying for servers and if you create a new account there is a big process on how that is being handled in the backend," he said. "We would rather have you buy a new game than a used game because buying a used game is only a cost to us; we don't get a single dime from a used game, but we still need to create server space and everything for you. We want people to at least pay us something to create this because we're paying for it. It was actually a loss for us to have new players."

Over the past year, EA has implemented the $10 online pass in many of the games that feature extensive online offerings, including all of the EA Sports titles, Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit, Medal of Honor, and Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (which rebranded the initiative "VIP Access"). If you buy the game new, you don't pay anything extra; you just have to enter an annoying code before you jump online.

"Hopefully people understand why," Bach said. "It's not to punish people. To us it's compensation."

When we reached out to EA for a comment, a spokesperson said the company has not announced an online pass yet.

[via Eurogamer]