Slashdot Mirror
Companies Offer AAA Games For 'Free'
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.
to subscribers only.
So, you take an old game that still has some interest, ad adds, then release it for free? Thats kind of like what Valve did for Counterstrike, only they forgot the 'free' part. They certainly nailed the ads though, both in game on walls and on the scoreboard.
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
Me: -1
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!
These companies are finally allowing people to play these great, (some) historic games without the legal ambiguities of abandonware hanging around their neck. For us old farts and the occasional curious young gamer, being able to play C&C95 at any time is not only a great marketing tool for EA, but it is an important piece of gaming history that is now freely available. GJ to EA (for once) and Ubisoft. Oh, and not to snub Prince of Persia: I love PoP:SoT, which has a significant place in the history of platformers, and hope that it will eventually be phased to freeware (I understand the ads for now, due to bandwidth costs).
Alternate links, including one for Ghost Recon can be found here: http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?thread id=597322
Honestly, this is such a win-win, I don't know who companies don't do it more. You're not going to get significant revenue still selling these old titles, yet companies go after people for sharing 20 year old abandonware titles for some crazy reason.
When EA gives a game like this away for free, they get good PR, and they possibly create a new audience to suddenly look at the sequels to these games if perhaps they might not have otherwise.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Take a game that's already made it's money back, and probably sells all of 2 copies a month, but hey, let's make some more money from it! Always with the string attached. Dang money-grubbing companies. *sigh* I tell ya, as far as I can recall, there hasn't been a game released without strings since Guitar Hero.
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
I can actually get behind this policy. While I have a problem with advertisements in games for which I've paid full price, I have absolutely no problem putting up with reasonably placed McDonald's interstitial ads or menu banners if I know it's allowing me to play the game for free. An ad-supported, digitally-distributed model for older games is a recipe for success in my book and I'd support the model enthusiastically. I don't want to see it become the primary model for games, as I'm quite happy to shell out full price for a quality game with no advertisements at all. However, if someone were to make Freespace 2 (or hell, even the old Wing Commander games) available with this model, I'd sign up immediately.
P.P.S. I'm doing Science and I'm still alive.
>>(I understand the ads for now, due to bandwidth costs).
If that were the issue, a simple bittorrent seed would be a solution.
It's about creating a revenue stream from an otherwise worthless intellectual property.
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"?
C&C Gold runs on XP; the instructions for patching it to run on XP are included on the download page. Apparently, the IPX networking code on the CDs doesn't work on XP, so they provide a patch that removes the offending code entirely. The other net play options (including TCP/IP) seem to be unaffected, although I haven't verified this myself (don't have XP on this machine, so I can't test this right now).
You may also experience problems with the default screen resolution of 640x400 (graphics driver lock-ups on start in my case); use the supplied configuration program to change it to a more compatible 640x480 (and fiddle with vertical size on your monitor to fix the aspect ratio if you need to).
This was extremely cool of EA. It was a labor day weekend full of nostalgia.
Waiting for Warhammer Online.
The app datbase at winehq says that this version of Far Cry does not work. I'm not sure about the others. Anyone else test them? The retail version of these game do work in Wine, but I'm not sure about getting this modified version to run.
Huh? I remember hearing a while ago that Freespace 2 was released as freeware. A quick glance at its Wikipedia entry also shows that its source code was made available. In fact, a Google search will list a number of freeware web sites that have links to the game.
:)
:(
In short, you've been missing out all this time.
But don't expect the Wing Commander series to be released as freeware any time soon. It's own by EA now.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
I would think this version is one that does; I bought the 10 year aniversary pack which included everything from C&C to Generals (+ all exansions at the time) and they did update to work on XP.
Some years before though I bought something similar, but it was not updated.. needless to say I was not happy.
What I hate is games like EverQuest that want you to buy the game and then pay a subscription fee. I mean come on make it one or the other. Either I pay for the game and have a free subscription or I get the game for free and pay a subscription fee. Making it both just seems greedy.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
I didn't catch that C&C is also released by EA. *blush* Still, I don't see EA releasing any Origin titles as freeware any time soon. I'd love to see a revamped version of all of them to use today's technology. In fact, a great marketing tool would be to release the originals as freeware (do they run under DosBox?) while they re-tool the series to work under modern technology as a commercial project.
Same thing with the old LucasArts games. Sam and Max are now under Tell Tale Games, so why does Lucas hold onto the original? Release it to freeware, for crying out loud! Wishful thinking, I suppose.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
Does anyone have a link to download the Ubi games by BT? I'd rather not wait for their stupid download queues etc.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Most are available from http://www.gameupdates.org/ in torrent form, no less.
I haven't played any yet, but I heard mention of something about needing to register as being from the United States, as well as possibly setting your time zone to a U.S. one.
Jeezus pleezus but you pigs are ungrateful. Just don't download it then.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Seriously, no person (or company) has the right to take combinations of light and sound and claim it as their own, let alone put people in a cage for looking at said light and sound.
Long ago the church tried to shut down (or just plain kill) people who published independent books,as the church claimed they had the sole right (no pun intended) to control information. Now in present times - the current rulers by force (no longer officially the church) are claiming a similar right. Long ago some were smart enough to stand up for their rights and fortunately some still are.
Fnord.
why the european people never get the good things?
Does anything?
(Yeah, flag me as a troll... I don't care. It was a joke, and I am an Ubuntu user. Now the question is, will anyone with mod points actually READ this far. If so, please mod it as interesting. Consider it a social experiment to see if anyone reads beyond the opening comment without bothering to see the context.)
Except for the crown jewels, Ultima IV, which was released as freeware about ten years ago by Origin under EA stewardship (if you can call it that).
+0 Meh
Don't you know that in order to be modded up for something like this you have to start the comment with:
Nephilium
Did they release any of my favorites, like TripTik Hunter IV, Roadside Assist - The Awakening, or Extreme Traveler's Check Speed Signing?
RETURN without GOSUB in line 1050
Blizzard would HAPPILY give out a copy of World of Warcraft free to anyone who asks, if it were a good economic decision for them. Its not (or rather, was not at launch and will not be at the launch of each expansion pack for a few years yet). In the US, good high speed bandwidth is rare, and WoW is huge. The most efficient form of distributing untold terabytes of textures across the Internets is to not use the Internet at all, but rather to burn it on CDs, put the CDs in warehouses, and move from warehouses to retail outlets where your customers shop. (Also note that customers and users of MMORPGs are not necessarily the same people. Remember, although its changing slowly, a huge percentage of the video game market is gifts from Mom to child, and Mom may not get the same experience out of giving an emailed "CD" key rather than something wrappable.)
The problem? Retail outlets don't stock CDs just to make you happy -- you have to have a proposition for them to make money from the deal. The solution is to charge for a box what every other A list title costs, and give them an exclusivity deal -- that is why no A list MMORPGs offer online distribution for several months after release despite it being a technological no-brainer (after all, they do onlnie distribution for the beta, which in late stage is 100% the same product as the retail release). If you don't give them exclusivity, or if you drop the price on your CD to where it is nominal, they drop your MMORPG and use the shelf space for Sims: Fighting Aliens in the 'Hood or whatever that cash cow is on these days. (Which would you rather have, as a retailer? 50% of a $49.95 sale of GTA42: Vatican City or a $1 per CD bounty for giving out the AOL-esque "Free WoW trial!" CDs?)
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
AAA = Triple-A?
http://triplea.sourceforge.net/mywiki
Anyway, that's what I thought when I saw the headline...
There is another ad-supported Ubisoft game called Shadowbane. It is an old MMORPG, but apart from an ad that displays every time you start up the game, is otherwise completely free to play (installer is free, and the online subscription is free). The installer for this one however, can also be downloaded from BitTorrent. Very interesting way to find revenue for games that have become unfashionable, but are still viable in a Long Tail kind of way.
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.
Well, to me it looks as if these chaps are testing advertisements in games (yes, I know some games already have these) to see how people respond, and how much they don't mind.
A good idea placing them in free games (meaning, you can't expect to sell any more of them, so you might as well give them away and get a good name for this) as an experiment.
However... I personally find advertisements disgusting. They're the primary reason I don't own a TV (that, and the rather moronic content). Same reason I don't listen to the radio. Hardly go to movie theaters (sometimes, on a particularly good film, I go if I can find out when the actual movie starts).
Thus I, personally, have no interest in these games.
Meaning, if this turns out to be successful, I'm worried that we might see more ads in the games we buy. Which would mean that I buy less games than I do now...
Free PC version of ChipWits at http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/chipwits/
Guess the reverse psychology ploy suggested by the parent didn't work. Nice try, though; it was the first time I found this troll amusing. :)
-Mike
I'm sorry; I don't know what I was thinking!
I tried downloading the file and got a message that it couldn't install a download control.
Well, yeh, I don't use Internet Explorer for browsing the web precisely because I don't want sites installing ActiveX controls on me.
No, I'm not going to fire up IE for Fileplanet, even if I do trust them to download a program from them and install it, unl;ess they can vouch for all of their advertisers and anyone else who can inject HTML into their pages. Not just for the sake of running a bleeding game.
I hate it when people do that, I wish there were editors to catch it.... sigh.
p x?id=61#NewsMain
R ayman-Raving-Rabbids-%5BFree-Game---Ad-Supported%5 D
P rince-of-Persia:-Sands-of-Time-Full-Game-%5BFree-G ame---Ad-Supported%5D
F ar-Cry-Full-Game-%5BFree-Game---Ad-Supported%5D
The link to the C&C page that actually gives you the files (C&C GDI, C&C Nod, and XP install instructions) http://www.commandandconquer.com/intel/default.as
Rayman Raving Rabbids 11 meg
http://www.fileplanet.com/180428/180000/fileinfo/
Prince of Persia Sands of Time: 1200 megs http://www.fileplanet.com/180411/180000/fileinfo/
Far Cry: 2.7 gigs (!)
http://www.fileplanet.com/180410/180000/fileinfo/
-Styopa
They released an old game ($5 "value"?) full of ads. That's cool I guess. But then they act like they cured AIDS and gave away the cure. Feh.
If "eyeballs" have value, how can something be free when you intend to force me to view ads to use it?
You can get the Ubisoft games from Gamer's Hell or FileShack too.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
Loved that when I first saw it. Very clever.
And my experiment proved a success. Well, someone modded it insightful anyway. What does this prove? Well it's quite detailed, but it proves*^^((%*%^... NO CARRIER
I downloaded Far Cry (2.6GB) from Fileplanet when this story first appeared on Slashdot. Didn't have time to install or play, so I let it sit. Finally went to install and play last night (9/7/07).
When I went to install, I was informed that I had to provide ubi.com logon credentials. Fine, that seems fair. So I registered a new account at ubi.com, provided the credentials and it *still* wouldn't allow me to install the game. Said I had to live in the US to enjoy the offer. Um... well I do live in the US. I figured maybe my account needed to steep a bit before I could sign up. *shrug*
Found this letter from Ubi.com in my inbox this morning:
Nice! I guess "free, ad-supported" only means "free, ad-supported for three days!"
What a shame. I love the idea of playing older games in an ad-supported format. I really love it when classic games are given back to the fans at the end of their lifecycle. Example: Arena (TES 1) from Bethesda Softworks, Zork Trilogy from Infocom (now Activision), and now C&C from Westwood. I paid $40 or more for each of those games when they were first released (I'm 38 now), now they're long gone from my collection but it is a great feelgood to play them again. There is a huge positive karma effect for these companies to give it up this way.
Oh well, at least C&C is still working. :-)