I lost [COLOR=‘Black’]the game
Fuck EA in a sack of hammers, rocketing towards the deepest pit of immolative hell with a fiery pickax and cyanide.
The boss of Origins is a hypocrite, and a pretty bad one at that. But then again, EA has a knack for being complete assholes, so this isn’t a surprise to me.
What movie/show is that scene from? I swear I’ve seen that dance before.
I can kinda understand the idea that the guy from GOG and EA are going for. The whole, “whats the point of buying it now when it will be on sale within the next 6-8 months anyway”. And i get that, Ive thought that many times. I have also told many people on steam “don’t buy a game if its not on sale… just wait a bit”. and in a sense it does cheapen IP if you simply look at it as that. But i think there is a major part that is missing from that view point. Many games that are full price, regardless of how much i would like it, i wouldn’t pay for it. so its not loosing X amount of dollars because i waited for it to go on sale instead of paying full price, its gaining X amount of dollars because i wouldn’t have bought it in the first place. Also, there is another phenomenon in play. There are games that i never would have bought if they weren’t on sale. Either i hadn’t heard of it otherwise, wasn’t interested, or yeah that impulse buy. However, because i bought that game, and liked it, i’m now willing to buy more from that series or company just cause i liked that one game, which in turn generates more money that I’m giving to that company that otherwise wouldn’t have been theirs. Finally there is another point. If the game is good enough quality and i really want it, i have no problem paying full price. having games go on sale doesn’t prevent millions of copies sold within the first week/month all at full price (or more if collectors editions are taken into account) what sales can do however, is get someone willing to pay full price for the next game to come out, creating even more money than would have been made otherwise.
2005 Series reboot of Dr. Who, starring Christopher Eccleson.
In terms of profit margins if you buy a disc from a store there are a number of people who take a cut:
Developers
Publishers
Platform Owner Royalties (If console - if windows live I expect M$ take a cut here too despite doing nothing)
Store Owner
Distributors and cost of materials
Pretty sure the publisher takes the biggest cut there but to be fair they are the ones that front the money for these games to be made. The money that goes to the developers pays salaries.
If you look at the direct download models and services like Onlive you will see that the publishers still take that same percentage or bigger, the services still charges the same (in a lot of cases more) and yet the retail and distribution sections aren’t involved.
That’s what I object to and one reason why I think digital distribution will never explode in popularity. People still like to have the actual disc in their hands when buying a game, spending more or the same for a game that you may not be able to play in a few years because the servers have been switched off just doesn’t make sense.
I don’t like EA’s business practices but it’s not as if they are the only ones doing it. If you play Call of Duty you will likely be suckered into buying DLC maps. Oh how I miss the days of PC games with mod tools, pretty sure that era is over.
Sales in the end don’t cheapen intellectual property rights EA, they just reduce your profit margins and that is what you are worried about. If you are worried about artist integrity why not actually encourage art and give them time to instead of forcing your developers to make ridiculous deadlines.
Steam sales is still much better than the console gaming situation.
Console games:
- game is sold in-store at full price. developer/publisher/store each take a cut a varying ratios.(people still buy at this price)
2.game is soon sold as pre-owned for considerably cheaper. Only the store takes a cut. (gives people a chance on a smaller budget to purchase the game)
PC/Steam
- game is sold at full price. Developer/valve take a cut. (People still buy at this price if they want the game at release)
- a considerable time later the game goes on sale.(takes more time than how soon a pre-owned game for console takes to be available). the developer still takes a cut unlike console’s pre-owned situation.
the only difference between console and pc is the devs still make money on pc. how is this bad?
Thanks. I remember seeing that on TV before, just couldn’t remember where.
Au contrare.
There will be mod tools for Takedown.
The game will be based on Unreal Engine 3.
(The game is a spiritual successor to the original Rainbow Six.)
Sorry for necroposting, but I think this is somehow related and interesting.
Steam deals don’t “cannibalise” sales, says Valve’s director of business management
In ya face, EA!
I’ve actually just bought Max Payne 1 & 2 during the Steam Summer Sale, even thought I already owned a physical copy of both of them, because it was so darn cheap. I’ve done this plenty with games I already owned physical copies of. I like not having to find my CD’s/DVD’s for each game, install all the patches, and install no CD cracks (I hate dragging out my physical CD/DVD just to play a game) every time I want to put a new game on my rig. With Steam sales it makes it a no brainer for me to buy it twice so I can have all my games easily accessible all in one place and I don’t have to mess with any of that nonsense. In the end not only am I happy but the makers of the games end up getting double sales from me regardless of how little I pay for it during the Steam sale. I think that’s kinda the opposite of cheapening an IP.
^this, a thousand percent!
I support cheapening intellectual property, because games are not worth $50. EA needs to realize my price point and design their games accordingly.
I do not support the cheapening of intellectual property. I think that AAA games with massive budgets have their place in the game industry. I just think major publishers need to learn that not everything they do has to be AAA games and that they could instead of doing only a few AAA games do a lot of medium budget games and a couple of AAA games.
Agreed, I can’t think of any time I have paid full price on a game. Even before Steam and its sales I always bought games on sale or that were used. And I rarely bought them on sale, however after steam I have bought a lot of games on sale and those profits went to the game companies rather than Gamestop or wherever.
Even nowadays AAA games are too expensive in my opinion! What is the most you can get out of a game? 12-15 hours of fun (most of them don’t have any replay value - MP aside, I’m not such a passionate multiplayer fan)? Hell, that’d be about 5€ for an hour of gameplay (60€ ~ 74$ seems to be the new price for licensing intellectual property in EAs eyes). And that’s about what I get on my salary … so NO!
I guess it’s time to uninstall Origin.
The only reason I have Origin is because of Battlefield 3. Unless DICE start to release all their games exclusively online through Origin, I can’t see myself using it in the future. I wouldn’t say Steam was so successful back in '09 when I first got it, because at that point the physical game market for all platforms was booming, and there was no real reason to link purchases to an online account. But I think one of the main things which made Steam suddenly so successful was the release of Call of Duty games exclusively for Steam - I’m guessing Activision saw the potential in an online marketplace/community like Steam. From then on, Steam started becoming a requirement for a massive number of releases, due to the ease of release and updating and integration with social networking. Customers would come to Steam to play the game they bought in-store, and then be hooked in by Steam’s instant buy-and-play system, coupled with the insane sales. The more games use Steam as a necessary platform for release, maintenance and network playing, the more customers Steam rakes in, and the more money it makes from the sales.
Where is this going? Steam has quickly snowballed into one of the biggest names in intellectual property distribution, and quite frankly EA just appears butt-hurt that their Origin platform has made it late for the party - the only reason people use Origin really is games like Battlefield 3 which aren’t available on Steam or in stores, and those customers have no incentive to stay with Origin.
As for GOG, I don’t know why they’re annoyed. I absolutely love GOG, and anybody in their right mind would choose GOG over Steam for its collection of ‘oldies’, because the UI is entirely online, there are unlimited downloads to any computer and all games come fully optimised for modern OSs.
Pats you on the Back
You wont regret it.