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EA To Provide Free Distribution To Kickstarter Games
New submitter The God of Code writes "EA has announced that they will be waiving all Origin distribution fees for crowd-funded games — like those from Kickstarter — for the first 90 days. 'The public support for crowd-funding creative game ideas coming from small developers today is nothing short of phenomenal,' Origin VP David DeMartini commented. 'It's also incredibly healthy for the gaming industry. Gamers around the world deserve a chance to play every great new game, and by waiving distribution fees on Origin we can help make that a reality for successfully crowd-funded developers.' The recently funded Wasteland 2 developer Brian Fargo applauds EA's move, saying, 'Having Origin waive their distribution fees for 90 days for fan funded games is a major economic bonus for small developers. We look forward to bringing Wasteland 2 to the Origin audience.'"
Just your friendly neighborhood reminder that Origin tracks your hardware, installed applications, software usage habits and more with no way to opt-out, unlike Steam. This is the new games industry.
"Oh shit! There are about to be a metric shit-ton of big budget games by people who have been in the industry for years and know what works and what doesn't and we won't be seeing a shiny dime from them. Over the same period we have been pissing off our customers with our crazier and crazier RDM schemes, we need to stay relevent!"
What's the point of Origin? Why not just set up a shopping cart on your website and offer direct downloads?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Go away astroturfer scum
More Twoson than Cupertino
Have they dropped their obnoxious DRM yet?
So long as it's not sold exclusively through Origin, I don't see a problem.
Bend over and take my ughhhh snugg ugggghhhh drm ladden load of malware tracking. that's it baby right there. stop complaining about the pain. In 90 days I'll give you something to complain about. Right now it's free. Stop crying. You know you want it.
What the hell are you talking about man? It's not as though it has anything to do with Publishing. Putting your game on Origin isn't like getting in bed with EA in the traditional sense. I also think this is a good move by EA to promote people putting games on their service. Considering after 90 games most games wind down in purchases, Origin is practically giving bandwidth to the developers for nothing while letting them reap all the rewards of their launch.
Pretty certain it's not:
Can I get my digital copy on Steam, if I want?
Absolutely. The digital copies will be made available through Steam and other DRM free digital distribution methods.
PLEDGE $55 OR MORE ... premiere access to an early playable beta on steam.
Source
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
If you follow the links, you eventually get an opportunity to pre-order a digital copy of Wasteland 2 for $20, DRM-free. That makes me think he's just using this Origin news for free press. I hope that's what he's doing. The idea that he's taking advantage of EA makes my heart warm and extra thumpy.
Yep. So what they're saying is that if you want to be raped by Origin - maybe you fancy that kind of kinky thing? - you can have that. And the rest of us will have their Steam or GoG digital copies, and/or physical boxes (in fact, a donation of $50 or more gets you both a box and a digital copy).
And also he's not unhappy about it I'm sure. To get big sales, the game needs to be on the most DD services possible. Steam being the big one, of course, but all the others are worthwhile. Id they don't charge for the downloads for awhile (that's how DD makes money, they take a cut of the sales, though less than retail) then all the better. More money for inXile.
Also a developer isn't going to go out of their way to piss off the publishers. inXile may well want to make another publisher funded game. Kickstarter is neat and I love it, but it isn't going to replace publishers. You can't raise AAA title type of money ($10-30 million) and just not everything is going to find funding on KS, fans have to be interested in large enough numbers and that won't always happen.
So I'm sure inXile is happy for the press, happy that they'll get a break on fees, and happy to play nice with a publisher. 100% win for them.
As an older gamer that protects his privacy, Origin is my version of the anti-christ. There is a general consensus that people do not trust Origin and a lot of games requiring Origin wont be purchased by these customers. It is for this reason SW:TOR didn't require Origin, they desperately required this game to succeed and making it Origin only would effectively reduce their client base.
Origin offering 90 days free trial for upstarts is EA's way of trying to create a user base.
If you're not a business
Then you start one, because it's foolish to keep developing games outside of a business. If you can't afford to start a business you're way over your head in dealing with EA.
you can do Google Checkout/Amazon Payments.
If you're a business you won't have any trouble dealing with a credit card processor. They'll take a cut, but so does everyone else. It's a matter of making the right choice and spending some time with a spreadsheet.
Then there's the handling of the download - either have to do a login system so people can redownload
You do realize that the guy who wrote minecraft (and he's far from a genius, bless him) actually did all this... Right? Minecraft had sold well over several tens of thousands of copies before he even started pondering about moving his stuff to "the cloud". It was all a single webserver handling it with a credit card processor. Not some sort of magic. Anyone considering making a game larger in size than minecraft has already begun considering the distribution options before slavishly beginning development.
It's the payments and website downloads that are the hardest parts.
If you make a game and you as a company find this "the hardest part", I fear for your business. You don't go to Steam or Origin because you can't handle the traffic or can't delegate payment, you go there because they have a freaking huge userbase and the companies typically have all the credit card numbers of their users neatly stored in a database for impulse purchases. Then after the impulse purchases you wait for the stragglers to buy the game when it's offered in a discount. Go on steam during the weekend, and look at the sales chart and the discounts offered. That's why you use these distribution networks: a large userbase. Despite all that though, there's still plenty of indie devs who succeed in selling their stuff and distributing it without Steam or Origin (or Impulse and its measly marketshare) for that matter.
It's partly why the Apple App Store is very popular
The apple store is an entirely different beast. iPhones and iPads are pretty much walled off from using "typical" software installations. It's the Apple way or no way at all. It's not a matter of choice. And again, you don't start iOS development because there's a neat little platform to distribute stuff over, but because you think your product will have a large userbase and can benefit from the impulse purchases.
These platforms are not going to lower your cost, no matter how pretty they picture it. They have the same costs as you do: (virtual) server infrastructure, maintenance, and credit card processors. They may get a bit of a better rate, but not by much, and don't forget they're out to make a profit too (just like you are) so they are going to be in your pockets for that. So in the end the bill will probably be the same, if not higher because of overhead costs. Oh and there WILL be overhead costs. Don't forget they'll probably make you use their APIs as well, for a seamless integration (friends lists, chat, etc etc). Sure these costs aren't going to be the bulk your costs, but don't forget about that.
You've got to ask yourself when someone offers you this: where is the catch? And it's pretty obvious what the catch is, right? After 90 days those games don't stop existing. Once you're deploying patch 1.12 out on the origin servers they're going to say "Wellp, that's gonna cost you. Remember that contract? Did you read the fine print?". Plan on doing some DLC? Are you sure it's not an Origin exclusive? Bandwidth used by people reinstalling the game after those 90 days? What about your price? Do you get to decide when they offer the inevitable discounts?
I would be very cautious when approached by EA (or anyone for that matter) with such an offer, because you can be sure there's no such thing as a free lunch, and you can be damned sure that EA of all companies isn't doing this out of the kindness of their heart either. They're out to maximize THEIR profits, not yours.
Agreed. Kingdom of Amalur is a great example of a game that could have been great, but was tainted by EA and ruined the company. Kickstarter is good for exactly the same reasons EA isn't.
Dragon Age:Origins was exactly the same. Except it was impossible to tell why your DLC was showing as unauthorized!
So, after a reinstall it's a server down problem. YAY!
Origin didn't pull Steam games and import them for me. But I did later type the serial numbers in to add them to my account. That way I can play one game on Steam on one computer and (...shifty-eyes...) another game on that other computer from Origin. Pay no attention to my wife sitting in that chair. I'm playing them both. She's just watching. Really...
> On top of that, it seems like EA actually takes their customer service seriously.
Bullshit, Origins support is known as the worse. Just google image search "EA Origin support" to see some of the nightmare support people have been getting.
EA knows that crowd sourced games will dig into their profits. EA already tried to buy everything up, but they cant buy the crowd sourced games makers.
EA will just offer a "helping hand" with just a few legal strings attached... Maybe they will even use the same contracts the record producers give the artists....