Game Retailers Not Liking EA's Project $10 Tactics

[UbeRveLT]

[citation][nom]Rab1d-BDGR[/nom]Screwing over the resale value to their original loyal customers. Publishers have no right to collect rent on used goods! This will only encourage piracy - and EA will wholly deserve it![/citation]

Exactly. They already made their money when the product was first purchased. Now the customer owns it. So when the customer then sells it second hand, EA think they have a right to get some more money from it? Absolute BULLSHIT.

GG you greedy ******.

 

[vicsrealms]

Its just going to make me think twice before I purchase a game. Its not like I have purchased a lot of console games to begin with, but now I am definitely going to think twice.

 

[Guest]

when i sold my Q9650, EP45 UD3P and 4GB of g-skill ram to pay for my i7 setup, you know how much money intel, gigabyte or g-skill saw of that? (bear in mind before i bought my new setup) $0 until i bought a new i7 860, P55 board and 4GB DDR3. all EA is doing is hurting itself with this measure because like was stated in the article, games are usually sold to pay for new games. this just proves my theory that EA is run by a bunch of penny pinching, masochistic, blood sucking vampires

 

[eddieroolz]

I'm definitely not buying EA games until this goes away.

 

[Guest]

I don't agree with these kind of tactics. When you purchase a new car, the money goes to the car manufacturer (and sales people also). When this same car is bought used, the car companies don't come in and gouge you for a cut!?!?! This is completely absurd, and is sure to drive people away from games altogether. LISTEN EA, the world is in a recession or just getting out of it!!! Krist people are stupid, arrogant to suggest such things, greedy and again greedy!!!!!

 

[megamanx00]

And thus I won't be buying such games till they go below $15 with shipping on new egg 😀. I never really sell or trade in my games ( I usually keep them so long I just end up giving them away ), but moves like this just piss me off.

 

[g-thor]

First, I have to say this is sad. I see people saying this justifies stealing the game from EA. That doesn't actually hurt EA, it just makes them insist on harsher, stupider controls that make the game buyers suffer.

What does hurt EA is getting an e-mail from every gamer saying something like, "I thought this game looked great and was going to buy it. Then I found out that your DRM is invasive, restrictive and annoying, so I decided to buy a game from a competitor instead. They don't do things like this."

Every time EA makes a game that looks good, but cripples it with DRM like this, every gamer who wanted it but decided they didn't like the restrictions needs to tell them they just lost a legit sale. Don't "pirate" it - that lets them justify more stupidity on their part. Refuse it, openly, loudly, clearly. Then EA will take notice.

That's my first 2 cents worth, but it also includes this downloadable content, free - sometimes I like to give my games away to others. I have made some young friends on tight incomes very happy this way. EA is now developing a business model that means I can't make some kid happy anymore. Do I profit from giving it away? Oh yeah, but I don't think I can give a cut of that to EA. They don't understand what it means to get pleasure from doing something nice.

By the way, EA has been crying about piracy since the days of the Atari 400. It was a great threat to them, and they weren't sure if they could survive as a company, if it kept up. Now we're told it's even worse than back then. So how did EA survive all those billions of lost revenue? How did they become this behemoth company today, with all those losses over the years. Why, I bet they can barely pay their CEO minimum wage nowadays - what do you think?

Finally, I was thinking of getting Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed II, until I found out that you can't play it without an active internet connection. They've lost my money, and I won't download a crack of it either. I can't blame them for trying to protect their work - I just don't like how they've done it for this one. Can't find an email address to send my note to, so it has to go by postal service - hope it makes it there.

 

[Guest]

This makes total sense to me. WoW charges a monthly fee to use their services why shouldn't EA charge a fee to keep all of their servers and online services up and running for people that didn't give them one red cent.

 

[mdillenbeck]

I understand that games are expensive to make. The gaming industry is becoming the new Hollywood (judging by advertising, the number of sequels, and the quality of product).

However, I am in agreement with most people here. EA wants to get a share of the reseller market, but they do not want to share the risks that someone in the resale market takes. I know people think the markup is great for Gamestop, but after working a computer Renaissance I can tell you that it isn't that great. As a game gets old the new price drops, the number of people trying to sell it increase, and the number of used customers greatly drops - meaning they are risking a lot when buying. Honestly, look at the number of games in their bin, and realize that they often shift inventory around stores in order to make it look like everything sells. (Things that stay on the shelves leaves no sense of urgency to buy - things that disappear, even if in the back room, means buy while its there or you may miss out.)

My question is what are we really buying? Its not the code, its not a physical disk - are we merely token-plunkers in an arcade? Are we only buying the right to play the game? If so, why am on not charged by play time? If I am buying play time, why am I limited to the number of installs? If I am buying play time, why do I need a disk to install the game and often an internet connection to register?

 

[jwl3]

Is this a recent thing? EA has screwed me over so many times my as.s is raw. The last straw was when they canceled NBA Live for the PC and Madden, games I bought every year for the PC since the dawn of EA. They claimed pirates made the PC unprofitable and they were "rethinking" the system to provide a "better experience. "

I have since never bought a damned EA product (distributed, produced, whatever) since two years ago. I want to play Left 4 Dead 2 but it's distributed by EA so f* ck no.

 

[jwl3]

I take superb joy in every quarterly fiscal announcement by EA, when the ret ard trots out sheepishly and tells their investors that due to "market forces" their profit sucks bal ls.

 

[Guest]

This is not DRM or anything related to DRM. You can still buy the game used, you just dont get the downloadable content that is not required to play the game. Its extra, you want the extra you pay. DLC is microtransactions at its finest, you dont need it, stop complaining about not getting bonus things for free. They could just as well not add it in to the new copy and make everyone pay or save people who buy new the trouble and give it away. Makes sense, seems fair , they want their money for the extra content.

 

[False_Dmitry_II]

Course, I don't use gamestop period and just cut out the middleman for buying used games.

I think there's probably like 2 games I've bought full price (and new) in the past 3 years and that was mass effect 2 (for PC, just to be all, PC games get bought too, got mass effect 1 used for like $10 less a month after it came out on 360) and halo 3. Everything else I buy is used. So I guess to them pirating or buying used makes no difference.

 

[mikewong]

I used to buy games at their full price, but since last I just buy them when they are on specials. It's so much more cheaper if you can wait.

 

[Kelavarus]

I take it no one here uses Steam? Because... This isn't anything really new. It's just finding a way to enforce the same principals on non-digital distribution games.

*shrug*

 

[sinman]

EA lost my respect a few years back, with their "Throw as much sh1t against the wall, and see how much sticks" methodology.

Every game they release is premature, it amazes me. They are willing to gimp a whole game just to meet a deadline and then dare to ask for $50-$60 on a game with DRM crap on it? Give me a break.

Just the thought of giving my honest hard earned cash to a bunch of corporate blood-sucking executives that give a sh1t about their customers, makes me shiver.

And then you have idiots like the guy who posted an article from Penny Arcade, saying to the "I'm going to pirate" guys. Back to my first paragraph. This is where the sh1t sticks.

You know why Blizzard games don't get pirated as much? Its simple Battle.net . They give me a service in return, a service that makes a pirated version look incomplete.

And I'm not talking about DLC crap , I can live without it just like many others.

 

[T_L_T]

The point of the DLC is that it's free to people who buy the game new, thus giving them a reason to buy the slightly more expensive new one over the slightly cheaper second hand one, for with EA and the developers get no money.

Buying second hand games only benefits the store that is selling them and a developer friend of mine once said (admittedly slightly drunk at the time) that he hated 2nd games more piracy. The people who pirate will probably never pay, the people who buy 2nd hand games is potential lost earnings.

No wonder EA are trying to get a piece of it!

 

[rantoc]

This will just make some people pirate more, if people who wants to be legal can't afford a game directly they wait and now that option just became more expencive. Not hard to see what will happen instead...

Why not add additional benefits for that cash instead, you buy retail. Register it for additional content and if the person who purchases the title from you wants thoose additional item they have to pay that fee. Additional income from resales market done right IMO.

 

[T_L_T]

[citation][nom]rantoc[/nom]Why not add additional benefits for that cash instead, you buy retail. Register it for additional content and if the person who purchases the title from you wants thoose additional item they have to pay that fee. Additional income from resales market done right IMO.[/citation]

Isn't that exactly what they are doing?

All new versions of Mass Effect come with a cerburus network key, you register is and you get free DLC. If you buy it 2nd hand you have to pay a $10 fee to access the DLC.

 

[princeofdreams]

EA are not charging a levy on second hand games, they are charging for access to the DLC, DLC does NOT come with the game, for example the CoD games, they had DLC that was released incrementally after the main game release, if you wanted the extra maps and bonuses you had to pay for that DLC whether you had bought the game new or second hand.

Where EA are being very snide is by releasing the game with a access code for instant DLC, no doubt this DLC will become de facto for the game, so for example playing MP games you will need the maps that come with the DLC of be continually booted from servers. The principle behind DLC hasn't changed, it was always to screw more money out of you for very little, whether you had a new or used version didn't matter, it is just now you will need it from the start to have a complete game.

I always stated console owners were getting stuffed with DLC, and always was told i was just a cheapskate, the few bucks here and there didn't matter, well now console owners are finally starting to understand what it means, if you think this will stop at EA & Sony forget it, all of the major publishers will do the same, the writing is on the wall.

This is the real reason behind the decline of PC gaming, not that piracy affects their profit line so much, but because they cant control the PC market the same way, they can't enforce DLC on us. Too many people in PC world, can make mods, maps, adjust code, if the publishers try to stiff us we alter the games ourselves, hence the publishers want to kill the PC gaming market

And by the way advocating piracy for console games is pointless, cos even if u manage to pirate the game, not get your console black listed, you will STILL have to pay to get that DLC, You have been bent over and screwed, they didn't even use lube and there is nothing you can do about it. Still think that console was a good investment? Still think paying an average of $20 more for each new game was worth it?

If you all really want to wrest control back from publishers then ditch the console and game on a PC