Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Companies Offer AAA Games For 'Free'

Posted by Zonk on from the depends-on-your-definition-of-free dept.

Both Ubisoft and EA are offering up free games to cash-conscious gamers this week. For the low, low cost of nothing you can play titles like Command and Conquer Gold, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, and Far Cry. The catch? Well, EA's offering is totally gratis; 1995's C&C Gold is a gift to gamers for supporting the series for all these years. The Ubisoft games, though, are only "free". They're available from Fileplanet in ad-supported format.

9 of 134 comments (clear)

  1. Free... by ChromeAeonium · · Score: 1, Informative

    to subscribers only.

    1. Re:Free... by Devistater · · Score: 3, Informative

      No, last I checked any fileplanet registration was enough to d/l these. I.e. the free registration, the one where most ppl make up thier login info?

  2. Rockstar by ShaneThePain · · Score: 0, Informative

    Why couldn't they have followed Rockstar's lead and just released the damn game without any strings?
    GREED!

    --
    Fascism is the greatest political ideology ever conceived. Sorry.
  3. According to TFA, yes... by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 2, Informative

    Apparently, if you burn the iso to a disc, and then follow these steps[.DOC warning], it works. I haven't verified this though.

    --
    Your ad here. Ask me how!
  4. It's a game-flavored ad by Fry-kun · · Score: 3, Informative

    I've downloaded Rayman Raving Rabids to check it out. There's just one ad - a pretty bad macdonalds one.
    You get the ad:
    1. When the game starts,
    2. Before every level,
    3. After every level

    This means if you play 3x 30-second levels you get 6x 30-second ad.
    I guess they looked at how the TV ads have been progressing in few past few years, added a quick spell of reductio ad absurdum and crapped out the result.

    Funny part is, I might've actually kept the game if there were some variety to ads and/or they showed up in longer intervals - at least 5 minutes or so..

    P.S. for some reason they make you link the game to your ubi.com account...

    --
    Did you know that "FTW" ("for the win") is a direct translation of "Sieg Heil"?
    1. Re:It's a game-flavored ad by ASkGNet · · Score: 4, Informative

      The ads are laughable. All of the advertising is done by DFHEngine.dll, which hooks D3D9 renderer to do its bidding.
      The main game executable has a call at the very beginning to DFHInitialize. Removing that removes all the ads.

      Enjoy.

  5. Re:Games with subscriptions should be free. by Enderandrew · · Score: 4, Informative

    The game has a heavy development cost, actually moreso than a standard game. When you buy the retail box, you are paying the developers for the initial cost of devlopment. The servers and bandwidth also cost money, and developers are expected to constantly squash bugs, and release new content to keep you playing, thus the subscription price.

    If you don't like it, check out something like Guild Wars (more of a slimmed down title, but cheaper) or Planeshift, which is free last time I checked.

    --
    http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
  6. Re:All that is nice, but... by Nephilium · · Score: 2, Informative

    Don't you know that in order to be modded up for something like this you have to start the comment with:

    I know I'll get modded down for this, but...

    Nephilium

  7. Getting C&C 95 is like... by JimboFBX · · Score: 2, Informative

    getting a gift pufferfish to eat from China. Dont accidentally install Direct X 3.0 , or adobe, or... Also it doesn't appear to work with XP Service Pack 2. I had to crank out my old laptop to play it. On my newer computer, it kept freezing anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minutes into the game even after fiddling with all the settings and compatability.