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Game Sites Rebel Over Exclusive Demos
Thanks to Shacknews for their open letter regarding Activision's Call Of Duty demo for PC, which will apparently be initially exclusive (with some file-based protection?) to GameSpy's FilePlanet subscribers. The letter announces that "...the following websites will not be carrying the Call of Duty playable demo, even after its exclusivity is over", and includes notable signatories such as Blue's News and Shacknews themselves. The appeal continues: "The above-listed websites hope to show Activision that the enthusiast industry is strongly opposed to the idea of exclusive demo releases. Feedback from our users shows that gamers hate to be forced through a single point of congestion if they want a demo right away... Deals like this hurt the industry much more than they could possibly enhance a single relationship." Update: 08/29 06:25 GMT by S : Activision have bowed to pressure, and will make the demo available everywhere, non-exclusively, from Friday night.
you can't blame them too much for trying something like this. Is there any chance we will be seeing more of it? Nah I think not.
Game developers want you to play their demos, so pulling something like this, which can only limit the number of people playing it, is sure to fail.
It's the old rule of the internet, anything you can buy somewhere, you can get free somewhere else. It won't be long before a gaming site that apposes this stuff becomes popular and so the cycle will continue
looks like everyone is happy again www.ausgamers.com The recent reaction to the upcoming Call of Duty demo has caught us here at Activision by surprise. We're appreciative and excited about of the high level of enthusiasm the game has received throughout the gaming community. Due to the tremendous demand for the demo - we are answering the call by not only making the demo freely available to all gamers at the same time, but early - This Friday Night - just in time for the long weekend.
One wonders ... how does gamespy continue to land these "exclusive" deals with these publishers?
Crappy servers, crappy players, and even worse, the games are HARD CODED to need gamespy, like Neverwinter Nights.
It's unfair, I couldn't boycott them if I wanted to, it seems like every PC game come with a "GAMESPY ENHANCED" sticker on it, meaning some in-game browser that doesn't work in multiplayer, and a game that won't work in single player AT ALL unless it can talk to a gamespy server. What a way to waste 60 bucks. WEAK.
Let us run our own servers, and keep your "value added" services to yourselves, we can do it better by ourselves anyway. All I want to do is be able to buy a game and play it online, why is that so hard? Wtf, Quakeworld did this crap better in the 90's better than any game does it TODAY.
Completely forgot about this game. For sure I'll download it tomorrow. It looks great and if it's done by the same team who did MOHAA, then no doubt it'll have great gameplay. I still play Allied Assault, the stupid expansions that EA came up with don't even compare.
IIRC, the first Unreal Tournament demo was released exclusively for 3DFX. At least there were several server where you could download the file, and it was possible to run it in software rendering mode, so you could play it without a Voodoo card.
Of course it made sense, since it was released for debugging purposes: narrowing down the hardware makes it much easier. I think Q3 had a similar pre-demo-debugging release.
Creating such a restriction for marketing purposes is not smart, IMHO. After all, you want to spread the demo. Everyone should play it. And everyone should like it (and buy the full game). A gamer that doesn't have the demo - because FilePlanet screws up or he doesn't like it or he doesn't want to wait - is one less potential buyer of the final product...
My cats ate my karma. They also wrote this comment.
so how long will it take this "resticted download" from being all over usenet? 1 hour? 10 mins? sheesh all this does for them is give them bad press, btw fileplanet/gamespy sux, they have worse bandwidth than my dinky ol' nix server, its just sad
1) Activision refuses to let anyone but FilePlanet host the demo.
2) People outcry publicly.
3) Stories about the problem cover the web--free publicity.
4) Activision relents, making themselves look good.
5) Profit!!!
(I know I missed the "???" step--I'm sorry.)
Consider that you're a game developer.
Would you:
1. Rather code for one server system, or code for multiple?
2. Choose the more popular service, which is more likely to stay in business, even though it has bugs, or use the less popular service which could go down at any time?
3. Rather set up your own server, which costs money, and which you have to maintain, or use a free or pay service which is maintained by someone else and always guaranteed to be available?
Even if you can set up your own servers, you still need a central point to distribute server lists so that players can find the games. That's what gamespy provides.
Stupid marketing trick, pissing off the world in general with it... Are you sure you don't mean Acclaim instead of Activision?
If they want to keep their demo exclusive to a site, more power to them; they'll need it. As long as it's not one of the sites I download my demos from, I'll ignore their demo, and won't get the chance to try the game. Without trying it, I won't buy it. If everybody did the same, companies like Activision would pay sites to host their demos.
-nt-
Why aren't these people using BitTorrent to distribute their demos?
|High-Speed Servers for FilePlanet Subscribers
|----
|Service: United Kingdom
|Wait Time: NONE!
\----
|Free Public Servers
|----
|Service: United Kingdom
|Wait Time: Just before 2hr dialup disconnection
\----
R Tape loading error, 0:1
I don't think anyone really has a problem with exclusive downloads if said downloads were available, speedy, and registration free. Fileplanet is currently none of these.
*shrug* the Lionheart Demo was an "exclusive" download, and was free to download on other sites within a few hours of release. I don't imagine any other demo won't follow the same pattern.
These developers release demos so that people can play them. This obviously means they think that the demo will encourage many people to buy the game. Therefore, the more people they get downloading demos, the more people they will have buying their game.
Which leaves me wondering why this demo was exclusive in the first place...but nvm.
Oh, and on the subject of GameSpy, stop using it! The sooner they go bankrupt, the sooner I will be able to download a free demo without paying for it.
[digital] + [literatus]
Thanks to Shacknews for their open letter regarding Activision's Call Of Duty demo for PC
:P
But it's not, is it. It's not for the 'PC' platform, it's for Microsoft Windows (I assume, I haven't RTFA, because this is a general bitch, rather than directed at this comment).
People continually see the 'PC' as the platform, you see it on all the boxes, 'PC-CDROM' etc. Yes, it's a PC-CDROM, but the damn thing (most probably) only works on Windows, so why market it as a game avaiable for the 'PC' platform - which would make is available for all OS's.
Ah well, I'll just boot to Windows and play it, anyway.
Something tells me Shacknews souldn't have brought this up if the demo was exclusive to Fileshack....
Hey Pot, how ya doing? Yeah, it's me, Kettle! Guess what? YOU'RE BLACK!
As someone with a File Planet account... when downloading from File Planet I always saturate my bandwith 768Kb ADSL (~60KB) no matter how popular a demo/patch/movie trailer/etc is. I recommend the 6 bucks a month (with a free year subscription to a magazine of choice) to anyone with the bandwidth to take advantage of it. Yes, File Planet may be slow to people who don't subscribe... but they are not obligated to provide the service at all.
*Free* mirror sites are annoying because downloads are horribly slow... often with disconnects and other crap.
As much as I respect corporations doing this for more money, in the long run it defeats the purpose of a demo and hurts consumer loyality, as many people already pointed out. But another problem is partially the consumer's fault. A lot of people whine and bitch about Fileplanet's slow speeds but none of them care to note the fact that its one of the most used file sharing sites that has remained fully professional and not "outsourced" itself with mirror sites that isn't under their control. A LOT of "free" download sites really mirror to a bunch of other sites which they have no control of.
Here is a 3dgamers.com bittorrent link for the demo.
"If FP had used BitTorrent, they would have cut down the bandwidth needs by a huge factor."
Bittorent did not exist when they introduced this service. In fact, the premium service was more a response to the increase in bandwidth fees and decrease in ad revenue as the dot crash happened in 2000-2001.
You make a very good case for them doing it now, but the fact that the software didn't exist a few years ago seems to not be a factor in your post even though it's a very important fact.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
"Deals like this hurt the industry much more than they could possibly enhance a single relationship"
Wah fucking wah. When will these people get over themselves!? Not that this has been the bedrock of economics for centuries all across the world. Deals and special relationships???? Who would thunk it!?!?! The world has yet to crumble under these same practices, so I think the gaming industry is pretty safe.
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How could you forget what made them big? "PlanetMoron.com, your only source for the latest developments on morons!" A whole network of corporate gaming fan sites (doesn't take a genius to figure out how absurd that is) loaded with little more than small bits and pieces of actual content, with the same layout just in different colors. With regard to any game most GSI sites are little more than replacements for the publisher's corporate web page, and instead have the news posted by some thirteen year-old kid who can't spell properly and wants some Internet fame.
As the subject says... inquiring minds want to know.
Ideas in this comment are smarter than they appear.