News EA: "Pirates are a marketplace"

The one company that's combating piracy right is Valve, and they do it by putting HUGE incentive into actually paying for the game. For example, the recent black friday sale had that THQ pack with more than a dozen games and expansions (more than half of which are very good, and worth buying on their own) for $50. Think about all the time and energy wasted on tracking down the pirated versions (which I have done in the past). Its not that the pirated versions are unavailable, or that the game company some how made the games more difficult to pirate, but rather, its that the distributor now makes it easy to buy and update the game all from one place, and they're compete on a level which they can actually win at (time) vs something they will always lose at (price). DLCs are only a stopgap measure until companies can figure out how to more efficiently distribute their content. To me, DLCs just breed illwill as it seems like company is now just trying to nickel and dime the consumer instead of actually producing content worth selling.

 

I would be more inclined to pirate DLC then the actual game... especially when DLC is usually not worth 50% of the cost it usually sells for.

 

Can you imagine if 3d printers become common, and people pirate schematics for electronics.

 

I don't see the neccessity in going overboard with the DRM like some of you have described. Granted, I am by no means a hardcore gamer, but IMO Blizzard and Valve have got it right. Warcraft 3 checks your CD key every time you go online, and they make it very difficult to get a keygen or something like that. With that, you can install it on multiple PCs as long as you are only online with one at a time, and it doesn't lock down your computer. You can download the game if you want, but you can't do mainstream multiplayer, only multiplayer on private servers, which aren't as reliable and don't have the player base.

Using Warcraft 3 as an example, it's easy to worry about DLC ruining game modding. If Blizzard charged people for new maps, and removed the "world editor", that game would have been dead and gone 4 years ago. Yet it's still one of the most popular games because of DotA and other popular custom-made maps that bear little resemblance to the original playstyle, but are far better than the original playstyle ever was. DotA is a prime example of why having free customization and modding abilities can make an average game into a great game. DotA has like 60 different heros, a ton of options, all sorts of custom items and spells and abilities, and regular Warcraft 3 has like 12 heros, boring items and abilities, and an mediocre game.

Steam, I actually like. The DRM isn't obtrusive at all, and the amount of content available for the price is amazing. The $10 Orange Box was the best $10 I have ever spent on software.

I know episodic gaming gets trashed a lot, but I for one like it. With story-based games, I like games that have more fresh content and new missions, maps, expansions, side missions, etc. I can point out a few games that IMO were under-developed in that they had an interesting plot, lots of options, and were a very promising game that rushed you through them with a plot that was good but far too short. Biggest offender IMO is the game Freelancer. It was an epic MMO-style game that had like 50 different solar systems, all with cool missions and exploration options and unique spaceships and weapons. The singleplayer plot was a 12-hour long piece of crap that, while exciting, rushed you through the bigger parts of the universe. You end up visiting about 12 of the 50 solar systems, and flying maybe 6 of the 30+ different spaceships available. There was easily enough in-game content that it could have taken you through much more of the universe and given you a chance to fly more ships and fight for more factions. The single player was 12 missions. You went to a solar system, met a new character, did one generic easy mission, then did one storyline mission, then moved onto the next one very far away, without ever exploring the nearby ones. There was so much more available. There are entire regions of space that you never visit, spaceships you never see, military factions you never encounter. The multiplayer has all this content, but suffers from a lack of excitement. In multiplayer, there are no multiplayer missions, custom missions, big fights, or anything. It's just flying around alone, and occasionally coming across another player. Plus, the original game was set up to have a number of different ships. The major factions were Liberty, Bretonia, Kusari, Rheinland, Corsair, Outcast, Bounty Hunter, Civilian, and Rogue, each one having various sub-factions. Each faction had a full set of spaceships - a light fighter, medium fighter, heavy fighter, and freighter. So all in all, almost 40 ships. However, the price and ability of the ships is scaled for singleplayer, which takes you on a pre-determined path through the different regions. To compensate, the ships in areas that you visit later in the SP campaign are stronger than the ones in the starting area. This kills multiplayer, because there is no reason to travel to the intermediate stages, you just rush to the region of space with the best ship. IMO, the multiplayer would have been much better if the different factions' ships were balanced with each other, with each faction having its own minor advantages and disadvantages. So, of all this variety, you end up with players using only Outcast ships, because they're better in every way than any of the other ships.
This is an instance where downloadable content would have really improved on a good game, but skimping on the storyline and not balancing multiplayer separately from singleplayer resulted in a game thats really fun for about 12 hours, then just falls on it's face and died. With a re-balanced and customized multiplayer missions, it could have been so much more than a mediocre 2003 RPG game that was popular for a few months then died.

 

I think you have a very good point, as many noticed I'm happy to tell people I pirate and if I looked back over the years I'd say I've pirated about 250GiB of games (absolute max) but I'm getting to the age now where money is nowhere near as much of a problem as it once was (18 in 7 months) so now I'm buying a lot of my games, I got a 360 in september and already have about 20~ games and with my PC I own about 10-15 on disc (somewhere ) but thanks to steams great deals I'm currently downloading about 200GiB in games to backup to my F3 1TB completely legally, pirating games is much more trouble than it's worth when you've got money you could use to buy them and dealing with the endless hassle of trying to find a good working copy of a game and finding out what DRM it uses is just a pita. That said there are still games that I pirate, FF7 for example because you can't buy it new anymore so there's no harm in pirating it but maybe one day I'll buy it just to drool over the awesome discs

EDIT: Actually looking at my backups and my memory of downloading games over the years it's much closer to 100GiB than 200GiB.

EDIT AGAIN: Nope when you take into account Wii/PS1/PSP/NDS games it's definately 200GiB

 

You can its just extreamly unfeasable, it requires (iirc) cracking open your console and having a seperate hd to store the game, and again iirc you can only have one game loaded at a time so it never caught on.

 

This guy may be my new hero if this catches on! Value is the key, games are loosing value on average, yet the price is going up?

 

EA doesn't know that DLC doesn't work, does it? I mean, almost every single game that has DLC is terrifically simple to pirate it for. When it comes to the xbox360 things are more complex - after all, even if you load it onto the hard drive, it's protected by live. and that's just not a good idea.

that's quite easily remidied by them releasing all of the DLC in one pop on a disk, though.

In reality, this is just another extension of EA's "The game is a marketplace" logic. That said, the future of games may very well be incredibly cheap base packs / cores ($10, for 3-4 hours of gameplay, one module, let's say), and then DLC, or added content to come. it would be the return of episodic gaming, which sort of fell apart on the SiN episodes.

Though Traveller's Tales has been doing it VERY well.

 

Exactly!

 

Didn't they just reveal a 3D printer that can print copies of itself?

 

What I see here is a prediction (or maybe they prepare us) for the fact that in the future you buy (or get for free) an empty game-engine (or shell) and the levels will all be DLC.

 

That'll be good for those on dial up

The more they focus on DLC, the more the pirates will.

 

People would pirate games if they cost £5. How anyone can moan that pc games are too expensive is beyond me, although I agree that the download prices are too high. I bought PES 2010 and ARMA 2 for £17.99 on the day of release. That is categorically not expensive.

People download pirated games because they have no integrity and are lazy. Bottom line.

 

I like the League of Legends method, the game is free but if you want any of the characters permanently you have to purchase them, this way you get to sample them all and if there's one you prefer you can pay to have it always unlocked. I agree with this method but what i don't agree with is games where you get it for free but if you don't buy anything then your at a disadvantage, i feel that is the wrong way.

 

That would be a great idea....sort of get a core of the game for free so you can see if you like it...if you do then buy the rest via download.....sort of like trialing a more extended demo.

There has got to be a better way of tackling piracy than through the courts etc....think the industry is right in recognizing this is just a vast untapped market and they just need a better approach.....I'm sick of buying games that turn out to be crap for £30 - £40.

 

Naah, that's done by the guys that get the game for free for reviews, just as with DVD's

 

You hit the nail on the head. That is the bottom line for piracy IMO. If kids aren't brought up properly to know that stealing a game is not moral or legal then they will do it. It's VERY easy to say to yourself "it's just one copy, no one will miss it." It's all just a symptom of where the world is right now. No one cares about anyone but themselves.

 

+3. Who needs 0% APR?

I dont understand why some people whine so much about piracy. As long as there has been money there has been stealing. If someone didnt want it stolen they would either make it hard to steal or just give it away. In computers as long as you know the code you can get anything you want for free. If EA was smart then theyd make anything not on a disk free.

Im not saying piracy is stealing btw

 

Agreed. Looking at EA's Dragon Age as an example, you had different DLC from different vendors (I don't think anyone offered all the DLC options), it required online activation (unless you downloaded the files separately and used a "third party tool" to decrypt them) and, given previous examples, pretty much sets players up for a repurchase of the game when the "GOTY" edition is released with all DLC included a year or two later.

DRM-free (or at least, just tied to the license key) cheap and universally available DLC can be a good thing - EA's offerings currently fail in all these areas and are likely encouraging piracy (of the DLC at least) as a result.

 

Greetings!

Ok...

So, your point was?