The future of gaming: Will we let them continue to abuse us?

[Slava]

EDITED to add the following:

I have been a gamer for 22 years and own around 1000 (a thousand) games. I used to trust developers/publishers to *sell* me the product to keep and enjoy forever and ever, just like that Monopoly board game I have in my closet. But it was only recently that I found that these days End User Licensing Agreements are such that they don't provide for my ownership of even single-player games.

I do suspect that I am not the only one who is/was in the dark about everything that has changed. For this reason I posted the below. Sound off, let everyone know what you think.

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Electronic Arts (EA) has been on a trek for profits showing complete disregard for the clients (gamers). They have destroyed many creative developer studios only to cash in on their good names.

The most recent outrage is what happened to BioWare. As most of you, I have been a loyal and loving fan of BioWare and its games for decades (since Baldur's Gate series). But now this love affair has come to a bitter end.

Since EA took over BioWare they have destroyed the following games/franchises:
Dragon Age (2)
Star Wars: The Old Republic
Mass Effect (3)

Don't take my word for it. Do some searching on the web and skip positive 1-liner reviews. Instead read long and detailed negative reviews.

How did this happen? Why did this happen? Well, I pay close attention to the stock market and company earnings reports. Here's how and why it happened (just the most recent examples):

EA did not have a very good 2011, so in the last quarter of 2011 (on December 20) they decided to push to the market the broken and unfinished game of Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR). It is essentially a single-payer game with barely usable or non-existent multiplayer components for which they want to charge monthly subscription fees. They did it, following aggressive advertising and hyped-up, misleading marketing, to improve sales numbers for the last quarter of 2011 and millions of gamers (myself included) were raped and robbed as the result.

Now, that the gaming community is on to them and SWTOR sales/subscriptions are not doing that great, they decided to push to the market the long-anticipated Mass Effect 3, even though it is a defective, buggy, unfinished game which does not deliver anything that was promised. Why? Because the end of the first quarter of 2012 is near and they need to show decent sales numbers.

(Search the web for GAMER reviews, not critic's reviews as all critics are on EA's payroll: How else would we explain why there is such a glaring discrepancy in critic and player ratings of the said games [not to mention that all critics' web sites, such as Gamespot have huge and colorful game ads on their front pages]? Conflict of interests anyone?)

So what we get lately is lousy games with Disk Locked Content for consoles/Downloadable Content for PC (DLC) for which you have to pay extra if you want the possibility of hope that you can enjoy the game(s). Gone are the days when you bought a disc for under $50.00 and actually owned the game you bought, free to play it forever, no matter how many times you upgraded/replaced your PC. The quality of games controlled by EA has been ever decreasing while prices and other charges have been ever increasing. But that's not all.

EA are not only destroying gaming as we know it, they are also infringing on our basic rights as consumers by making us accept their licensing agreements which boil down to the following (Don't take my word for it. READ the EULA for any EA game you have installed):

1. YOU have NO rights whatsoever;
2. THEY have NO liabilities or obligations to you whatsoever;
3. YOU own NOTHING. You should pray to EA asking them to allow you to pay for the license to touch their products;
4. THEY have the right to yank your privilege of touching their products and to yank support at their leisure and YOU have NO recourse if they do so (which results in your being unable to play the game anymore whenever they decide they don't want to support it anymore).
5. THEY will install spywares on your computer and collect your information and YOU cannot do anything about it; the Spyware known as SecuROM will continue to sit on your hard drive even if you uninstall all EA products and never install any new ones ever.
6. And if you install their games (and accept the License Agreement) you WAVE your right to sue them for any reason or be a part of any Class Action law suit against them.

Join me in my efforts to drive the gaming community to BOYCOTT ALL EA games regardless of the platform. Don't buy them no matter what. It is time gamers took a stand against abuse by this horrible company.

 

[casualcolors]

Not that I'm all that enthused about the idea of reactivating this thread to any extent, since it had some of the worst and least informed posting that I've ever seen on the topic, but I did just come across an interesting read from CDProjekt Red themselves. Witcher 2 which was heralded in this thread as being an example of how successful a game can be, largely because of it not having any DRM attached to it, sold approximately 1 million copies.

CDProjekt Red also reported that it was pirated an estimated 4.5 million times in the same time frame. They were largely ok with that since their business model for the game's sales revolved around a lower number than some AAA titles, but it doesn't take a genius to note that a ratio of 3:1 is absolutely abysmal.

Goes back to the theme that thieves and pirates steal because they like having free stuff. Saying DRM is the prime motivator really is a straw man waiting to be torn down.

 

[pleasenoname]

Yeah, you are right. No one is stealing the games because of DRM. They seem to have no trouble getting through the DRM though. Consider that the world has 7 billion people. If only 1% are pirating/stealing the game that is 70 million people. Most of those people will live outside the United States, because we have only around 4% of the worlds total population.

Find the foreign uploaders, who give it away for free. Charge them with industrial espionage. Then design a comprehensive working distribution and sales system for the third world/"Developing" countries where the content is being uploaded.

All the communicating back and forth between the game and the DRM bogs down the game in my opinion. The thieves don't have to deal with it, they disable it. Let me play a game with out "strings/chains" attached to it, because I bought it legally. End the EULA nonsense, I don't want a legal contract for a fun diversion of a few minutes.

 

[casualcolors]

Truth is that outside of games being hosted entirely online along with all of their potential associated goals and achievements and the keys to the game's progression itself, none of the DRM will work. You're right that's certainly been proven. But by the same token, all of the experimentation with DRM has started to head in that direction finally. On the downside, this severely limits what you actually own, but it's sort of a necessary evil being perpetuated by stealing.

In CDProjekt Red's case, their game was stolen 4.5 times as often as it was purchased. I don't think that every pirated copy equates to a sale lost, but if even a quarter of the stolen copies had ended up as purchases, that would be a significantly different sales figure for them. They're experimenting on the opposite side of the spectrum, but the evidence points to neither heavy DRM nor no-DRM solutions being effective. To an extent, at least the games with DRM do have a short window to achieve sales (measured in days, not months). Shame of it really is just that so many people are tacky enough to steal something as dumb as a video game. Irony of it is that they dump all over the industry and its interaction with the customer in the future as a result.

 

[Slava]

... their game was stolen 4.5 times as often as it was purchased...

I believe someone reputable mentioned in this thread that there is no way in the world that anyone can estimate, with any degree of accuracy, just how many 'times' a game gets pirated.

Do you have any details on how they came up with this number? Or is it just a PR guesstimate?

 

[casualcolors]

I believe someone reputable mentioned in this thread that there is no way in the world that anyone can estimate, with any degree of accuracy, just how many 'times' a game gets pirated.

Do you have any details on how they came up with this number? Or is it just a PR guesstimate?

Something that they teach you in school is how to avoid discrediting the competence of your sources and likewise, avoid alienating people holding the same stance as yourself when debating. Since CDProject Red stands for literally everything you hold dear in game development and customer relation, you should consider that.

As for the figure, it wasn't being presented in an inflammatory way. Just a number they offered up on the subject. They weren't claiming victory nor defeat on the subject because I don't think they build their business model around DRM policies one way or another. They're just exploring the options, same as everyone else. In their case, they didn't seem horribly surprised or disheartened. The number is simply for the sake of argument in the vacuum which is this thread.

Since they've adopted the stance by default of pushing for sales in the face of piracy without openly combating it aside from developing a good product (which Witcher 2 certainly was), I don't see any logical reason for them to offer up an exaggerated figure regarding piracy. If they said that their game was pirated 4.5 million times and made a huge stink about it, it would completely undermine everything that they are trying to achieve.

 

[rpg_poser]

Here is another perspective: If you take a look at Neo-GAF and Reddit, there are threads from an ex-viral marketer for EA. This person posted two graphs which show EA's shrinking sales and actual monetary losses since before SWTOR was released. It is possible that these graphs are fake, but they explain a few things, at least to me, since they all are tactics taken by management to eke more money out of a product:

1. Predatory DLC.
2. Poor or rushed story writing. (ME3 endings, DA2 dialogue.)
3. Games rushed to market. (DA2 bland repetetive environments and enemies).
4. Bioware public excuses that sound like they are actually aimed at EA executives rather than gamers. (Because they are.)
5. EA/Bioware employees skewing metacritic ratings. (May not have been spurred on by management, but still appropriate for this post).
6. Blaming lack of sales on piracy in order to boost the prices of new games.

All of these examples can be found by doing google searches, but I cannot hotlink anything from Neo-GAF due to work internet restrictions. Do some research, it all starts to make sense. These are all sort of desperation tactics. I believe that when company is in a successful phase, these types of tactics aren't used. Item #4 really perplexed me for a while, because I remember the Baldur's Gate era Bioware fondly.

Edit: Changed some wording for clarity.

 

[JDFan]

HAve to admit I did not read every post fully so may have missed a few things -- But Your assumption that DRM is to curb Piracy is incorrect ---

If it were specifically to curb Piracy the developers would have admitted defeat years ago (there is still no game released that does not get pirated and released DRM free within days of the official release if not sooner) - so no developer would still be paying for DRM schemes that were totally useless if curbing Piracy was their goal.

THe Main goal of DRM is to avoid the Resale and Rental market of PC games - by tying the product key to the original purchaser and not allowing it to be transferred they can keep the retail price of the games higher for a longer period of time and sell more copies of the game - while if there was a resale\rental market available the retail price of games would drop shortly after release since most games nowadays offer very little replayability and users would simply resell the game after finishing it thus costing the developer sales and profits if they wanted to continue selling the game (since they get no $ off of secondary sales and would need to lower prices of the game once used versions became available.) --- And the DRM schemes are working perfectly as designed for this purpose which is why more and more developers are using the model (which would not be happening if it was designed to curb piracy since the Pirates have broken every DRM scheme tried to date)

 

[casualcolors]

HAve to admit I did not read every post fully so may have missed a few things -- But Your assumption that DRM is to curb Piracy is incorrect ---

If it were specifically to curb Piracy the developers would have admitted defeat years ago (there is still no game released that does not get pirated and released DRM free within days of the official release if not sooner) - so no developer would still be paying for DRM schemes that were totally useless if curbing Piracy was their goal.

THe Main goal of DRM is to avoid the Resale and Rental market of PC games - by tying the product key to the original purchaser and not allowing it to be transferred they can keep the retail price of the games higher for a longer period of time and sell more copies of the game - while if there was a resale\rental market available the retail price of games would drop shortly after release since most games nowadays offer very little replayability and users would simply resell the game after finishing it thus costing the developer sales and profits if they wanted to continue selling the game (since they get no $ off of secondary sales and would need to lower prices of the game once used versions became available.) --- And the DRM schemes are working perfectly as designed for this purpose which is why more and more developers are using the model (which would not be happening if it was designed to curb piracy since the Pirates have broken every DRM scheme tried to date)

This is also a big deal and one of the few reasons that games keep getting developed on the PC platform. +1

Here is another perspective: If you take a look at Neo-GAF and Reddit, there are threads from an ex-viral marketer for EA. This person posted two graphs which show EA's shrinking sales and actual monetary losses since before SWTOR was released. It is possible that these graphs are fake, but they explain a few things, at least to me, since they all are tactics taken by management to eke more money out of a product:

1. Predatory DLC.
2. Poor or rushed story writing. (ME3 endings, DA2 dialogue.)
3. Games rushed to market. (DA2 bland repetetive environments and enemies).
4. Bioware public excuses that sound like they are actually aimed at EA executives rather than gamers. (Because they are.)
5. EA/Bioware employees skewing metacritic ratings. (May not have been spurred on by management, but still appropriate for this post).
6. Blaming lack of sales on piracy in order to boost the prices of new games.

All of these examples can be found by doing google searches, but I cannot hotlink anything from Neo-GAF due to work internet restrictions. Do some research, it all starts to make sense. These are all sort of desperation tactics. I believe that when company is in a successful phase, these types of tactics aren't used. Item #4 really perplexed me for a while, because I remember the Baldur's Gate era Bioware fondly.

Edit: Changed some wording for clarity.

The only flaw I find in that logic (I have no problem with points 1 through 4 I think they're all valid to some extent and point 5 is common for the entire business world) is that vice inflation, the price of games is at an all time low. The most expensive games are released to xbox and ps3 where they cost on average $10.00 more than a sega cartridge did in the early 90's. Bear in mind that while there are triple A titles released to xbox 360 and ps3 that retail for 70 to 80 dollars, there were also titles released to sega and snes that were priced 70, 80 and 90 dollars (and beyond). That is not to say that gaming is cheap, but it's the cheapest it has ever been on the whole.

 

[rpg_poser]

That's OK, brother. I think you and I simply will have to not agree on the piracy/game price thing. It could very well be my prejudice about not wanting to spend more than $40.00 for a new game. BTW - my wife agrees with me, but she hates games, so take that for what it's worth.

 

[casualcolors]

That's OK, brother. I think you and I simply will have to not agree on the piracy/game price thing. It could very well be my prejudice about not wanting to spend more than $40.00 for a new game. BTW - my wife agrees with me, but she hates games, so take that for what it's worth.

Well, I can't argue with this. I'm a notorious sale-searcher myself. A game has to be one hell of a title for me to pay a retail price over $40.00 for it. I certainly do it less often these days than I used to, that is for sure.

 

[laiskapummi]

My problem with EA is only with Mass Effect 3.

1. Day one DLC. I bough it (and the online pass) only because I dl'ed the original. I wanted to support the developer. (Don't judge me)
2. They cut off the ending to sell it a few months later. (True story)

 

[casualcolors]

All the publishers and developers could stand to learn a lesson from ME3 and never release story-relevant Day 1 DLC ever again. Really, just don't release intrinsic story details through DLC ever.

DLC should be relegated to cosmetic things, in single player games perhaps some access to more varied weapons, multiplayer map packs (as long as the maps are legitimately developed after the release of the game), and possibly offshoot side-stories when it is possible to create them without it feeling shoehorned nor affecting critical details of the main plot. And I feel like even this is a liberal list of what can rightfully be distributed as DLC.