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Anger With Game Content Lock Spurs Reaction From Studio Head Curt Shilling
MojoKid writes "Studios and publishers are fighting back hard against the used game market, with the upcoming title Kingdoms of Amular the latest to declare it will use a content lock. In this case, KoA ups the ante by locking out part of the game that's normally available in single-player mode. Gamers exploded, with many angry that game content that had shipped on the physical disc was locked away and missing, as well as being angry at the fact that content was withheld from used game players. One forum thread asking if the studio fought back against allowing EA to lock the content went on for 49 pages before Curt Shilling, the head of 38 Studios, took to the forums himself. His commentary on the situation is blunt and to the point. 'This is not 38 trying to take more of your money, or EA in this case, this is us rewarding people for helping us! If you disagree due to methodology, ok, but that is our intent... companies are still trying to figure out how to receive dollars spent on games they make, when they are bought. Is that wrong? if so please tell me how.'"
I am single dad with a single income but I have two teenage sons who like to play games. When something hot comes out like Gears of whatever, I buy a new copy. But for other games they wait until it's available used. I can't afford a new version of everything. I think that what they are doing is, at the least, mean-spirited.
http://www.busyweather.com/
How is it wrong to raise the price? This game is not that previous game you bought for the same price. In the same way Harry Potter is not star wars. They may come on DVD's but they are in no way the same movie.
And in short: you're going to go without. Good or bad the games industry is fed up with used games, and piracy. That means the entire experience is going to require you be authenticated with their service, constantly, and some of the core content will only exist on that service. In other words it's going to look at lot more like Steam, and a lot less like the 1980's.
No it isn't. It isn't a compromise at all.
A compromise is where both parties give up a little, to reach an "acceptable" solution, where otherwise there is an intractible situation.
Here, we have a game company pushing the envelope to push the transaction in its favor. Right ot wrong, this is not a compromise.
A compromise would be more along the lines of:
"we understand and respect the first sale rights of our customers who buy game discs, but also need to keep the lights on. Because of this, we have decided to offer the base game without any of the optional expansions for a reduced price. We reduced the price due to the extremely vanilla nature of the offering. The expansions can be purchased online as a downloadable content license for a fair price each. The single player basic campaign will not be crippled without the dlc, but the dlc does improve its enjoyability and replay value. You can redownload the dlc expansions any time you like, but they are tied to your user account, and are nontransferable."
Selling a dlc expecting game for the price of a full title, selling the dlc for premium prices on top of that, and offering some dlcs as special exclusives is *not* a compromise.
You are selling a purposefully deficient gaming experience for full price. This is dick move #1.
You try to make us all feel better by offering an exclusive dlc for "free". This dlc is designed so that second hand players cannot legally get it without buying another copy of the game band new. This is dick move #2.
The non dick-move solutions are as follows:
1) "exclusives" should be promotional only. This means "buy the game before christmas eve, and get this special novelty exclusive dlc for free!" (With the intent that 4 or 5 months later you offer the same dlc for sale for a modest price.) The only other time an exclusive dlc is appropriate is for a specific console vendor promotion. If you plan on selling a slimmed doen base game with the intent of selling dlc to make up for it, then you have to price your offering appropriately. If your game is super ultra vanilla without the dlc, offer it for 30$ instead of 60, and charge another 30$ for the dlc. If you want to bundle, then offer a "free" (ahem.) Download ticket for the dlc in the game pack marked 60$. Don't shut out second-hand buyers. Offer them the missing content for a reasonable fee. This way you stand to monetize the 2nd and 3rd hand sales. These are sales of the dlc that you didn't have to pay merchanising costs for. Instead of complaining that you didn't get those people to spend 60$, accept the 30$ they are spending on the dlc. (If they buy smartly, they can still buy used and get the dlc cheaper than new, which is why they buy used in the first place. People who buy used put up with intrinsic bads like scratched disks, missing manuals, beat up cases and the like already. Don't penalize them harder because you want the full 60$ from their wallets.)
In short: "required" (for the full game experience) non-transferrable dlc is *already* a compromise. Don't be a greedy whorish assfuck by dickishly witholding dlc content from second hand buyers that would happily buy the dlc from you, but don't want to pay your MSRP for the game disk. Don be a greedy whorish assfuck by double dipping your customers with a 60$ brand new disk that requires 20$ or more of seperate dlc to be playable. Those are not compromises. Those are being unreasonable, and you will hurt customer relations, and your brand, resulting in future lost sales.
The second hand market is a reality. Instead of pitching a hissyfit that you can't make only brand new sales, offer to service the second hand purchasers for a modest fee. Monetize the second hand market. Don't try to expunge it.
F2P (Free To Play) does NOT equal P2W (Pay To Win).
League of Legends is doing it right; it's free to play, and everything except skins are obtainable, though paying makes you get those faster. I have no problem with that kind of model and have invested about €100 so far over the course of two years.
Battlefield Heroes on the other hand, now there's a game that's pure P2W. Sometimes I play it for a few rounds just to see if it has improved; everytime I find it worse than before. It used to be an awesome game. Nowadays, it's all about how much money you can spend on those über weapons... Makes me sad. :(
systemd is not an init system. It's a GNU replacement.
See, that's not true, Steam is a perfect example of why it isn't.
Valve has managed to create a DRM system that actually adds value to the game for the majority of users. Every single Valve game is just as easy to pirate as games from other publishers, yet they lose very little sales to piracy. Why do you think that is? It is because Valve makes buying from steam more attractive than piracy.
RUGBYRUGBYRUGBY
Not only that I have to defend Gamestop a little here - I know several people who work at Gamestop, and three of them are store managers.
Here's how it works according to the fucktard who wrote the article: "The remaining $31.99? Pure profit..."
Now, here's how it works in reality:
- On that one game, Gamestop got $31.99 in profit. That profit went back into the sales figures for the store to pay for new inventory and to pay the wages of the workers and the rent to the property owner (Gamestops are in malls or strip malls, they never own a standalone storefront building on corporate-owned land).
- On several other games, Gamestop plunked down $20-25 in either store credit or cash payout. Those games sat at the $45 price point for a while. Then the $40 price point. Then $35. Then $30. Then $25. Then $20. Somewhere between $25 and $20, the "pure profit" that the fucktard article-writer assumes turned into a loss.
- On even more games, Gamestop plunked down maybe $10-15. The same thing happened. Maybe they managed to sell it at $20-25, maybe they sold it at less.
The short version is, sure, on that ONE used title Gamestop got a net $31.99 profit. Maybe that was enough to pay for one worker for roughly 2 and a half hours worth of time if they're at the standard $12/hour. On a number of other titles, Gamestop barely broke even, or even lost money when the game fell into "crap it's old, get it out of here, chuck it in the $5-10 bargain bin" range. Because that WILL happen to some titles, even if Gamestop shelled out $20-25 for it when it was new.
There's a Gamestop near my location that was posting sales numbers in the top 100 Gamestop stores for most of Christmas. They just got word anyways that they are getting shut down in February. Apparently Gamestop decided rent in the area isn't enough to justify keeping the store open, even with fantastic sales on both the new and used end.
So before you vilify Gamestop, think about that. A lot of the people working those stores are actual gamers. A lot of the people working those stores are trying to make ends meet. And the dirtiest secret of all... the "profits" for an operating Gamestop store are nowhere near CLOSE to what Asshat McDouchebag writing for ShitHardware, a crappy blog site with a broken registration system, came up with by pulling numbers out of his lying ass.