Game companies will always usually sell at full retail price even years later and their offers are rarely ever as good as other external sources. I know that Square Enix charges full price for Final Fantasy XI Online and all its expansions despite you can purchase the game plus all its expansions from other sources for less than 1/50th of what SE is charging for them when bought individually through their launcher. Thing is if the code you get is a dodgy one from an outside source then EA can't do much about that, you'd have to contact the people you bought it from to get a replacement, so what you're paying for when buying directly from EA is a guarantee that the code is genuine and hasn't been used by someone else. Yes a lot of the DLC is stupidly overpriced now but with it being so old a lot of external sources don't have it in supply that you're pretty much limited to having to buy it directly from EA or pray and hope that they'll some day do a reasonable sale price on it.