News EA shutting down four free-to-play games

Shame about NFS World, it wasn't the best racing or even NFS game, but it was okay for an MMO arcade racer. It was stuffed full of hackers though, which they seemed incapable of sorting out.

Oddly, I thought NFS:W had just switched over to a new team, who were starting to improve the game and doing more with it.

Yeah, Aeria Games bought it, and I see Battlefield Heroes is listed on their site too.

 

I will never pay a subscription fee for a video game. And I'm sure I'm not alone in that regard, given how well freeplay has done over the subscription model.

In honesty, I see freeplay games as an evolution of the old arcade model. Quality is rewarded, and crap games never turn a profit.
Obviously, there's differences, and it's somewhat problematic if you can become better than everyone else just by slapping in ten quarters instead of one. (Hence why continuing in an arcade game traditionally resets your score. It kept people from buying their way onto the leaderboard, I mean high score list).

Subscription fees are pretty much the opposite of that. Once you've paid in, you're committed for thirty days or whatever, and if you don't play you are WASTING YOUR MONEY.

 

I never feel that I'm wasting my money from paying subscriptions for MMO games even when I've not touched them for a couple of months.

The way I see it, if the monthly subscription costs less than the latest major AAA game within a 5-6 month period, then I'm happy to pay that subscription. If I've not touched the game for 6 months then yes, I'll temporarily cancel the subscription until I next decide to jump on but after the abysmal pile of trash that is AC Unity, I could never complain at paying £7.99 per month for something I may only play for one weekend every 2 months.

 

I would certainly agree with that. I would rather pay for a quality gaming experience than play a free-to-play game that is crap-and-a-cash-shop.

 

Have you not just described a pay to play model?

 

Therein lies the problem.

WoW and EVE have already been made, just like Counter Strike, Gran Turismo, League of Legends, World of Tanks and Starcraft have already been made. Any kind of multiplayer game has to compete with the industry giants just for basic survival, subscription games even more so and it's been more or less proven that it's an impossible target for a subscription MMO that isn't very specialist like EVE or Final Fantasy.

 

For one horrible moment I thought BF3 was for the chop. *Phew*

 

"EA shutting down ..."

And nothing of value was lost.

 

Everything went better than expected

 

Wow, EA pulls the plug on 4 games, hardly anyone cares. Meanwhile, Steam gets two-tiered accounts with a $5 entrance fee for a bunch of social add-ons and everyone flips out... kinda figures...