Despite a growing trend in recent years as a measure for anti-piracy/pre-owned sales, an online pass will not be required for the multiplayer component of Tekken Tag Tournament 2: Wii U Edition. This circumstance flies in the face of PS3/360 owners who have bought the fighter, as an online pass is required for those systems.
The news first came from Siliconera and was later verified by Joystiq, citing that there is no pass inside the game’s box.
Online passes on consoles have been made popular since the adoption by EA in its sports titles, soon moving over to other muiltiplayer offerings which were then eventually used by other publishers. The use of an online pass however isn’t anything particularly new; PC games have been using CD keys for well over a decade to help prevent piracy, often locking out users from online features if one isn’t submitted. Blizzard is one of the most well-known for utilising this strategy in their Battle.net service for games such as StarCraft.
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