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Companies Offer AAA Games For 'Free'

Posted by Zonk on Tue Sep 04, 2007 02:57 PM
from the depends-on-your-definition-of-free dept.
Entertainment Games
Both Ubisoft and EA are offering up free games to cash-conscious gamers this week. For the low, low cost of nothing you can play titles like Command and Conquer Gold, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, and Far Cry. The catch? Well, EA's offering is totally gratis; 1995's C&C Gold is a gift to gamers for supporting the series for all these years. The Ubisoft games, though, are only "free". They're available from Fileplanet in ad-supported format.
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  • to subscribers only.
  • So, you take an old game that still has some interest, ad adds, then release it for free? Thats kind of like what Valve did for Counterstrike, only they forgot the 'free' part. They certainly nailed the ads though, both in game on walls and on the scoreboard.

  • These companies are finally allowing people to play these great, (some) historic games without the legal ambiguities of abandonware hanging around their neck. For us old farts and the occasional curious young gamer, being able to play C&C95 at any time is not only a great marketing tool for EA, but it is an important piece of gaming history that is now freely available. GJ to EA (for once) and Ubisoft. Oh, and not to snub Prince of Persia: I love PoP:SoT, which has a significant place in the history
      • Does anyone have a link to download the Ubi games by BT? I'd rather not wait for their stupid download queues etc.
  • Alternate links, including one for Ghost Recon can be found here: http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?thread id=597322 [slickdeals.net]

  • Kudos for them (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Enderandrew (866215) <enderandrew@@@gmail...com> on Tuesday September 04 2007, @03:16PM (#20469041) Homepage Journal
    Honestly, this is such a win-win, I don't know who companies don't do it more. You're not going to get significant revenue still selling these old titles, yet companies go after people for sharing 20 year old abandonware titles for some crazy reason.

    When EA gives a game like this away for free, they get good PR, and they possibly create a new audience to suddenly look at the sequels to these games if perhaps they might not have otherwise.
    • What I hate is games like EverQuest that want you to buy the game and then pay a subscription fee. I mean come on make it one or the other. Either I pay for the game and have a free subscription or I get the game for free and pay a subscription fee. Making it both just seems greedy.
      • The game has a heavy development cost, actually moreso than a standard game. When you buy the retail box, you are paying the developers for the initial cost of devlopment. The servers and bandwidth also cost money, and developers are expected to constantly squash bugs, and release new content to keep you playing, thus the subscription price.

        If you don't like it, check out something like Guild Wars (more of a slimmed down title, but cheaper) or Planeshift, which is free last time I checked.

        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by MikeFM (12491)
          I just stopped playing those games anyway. None of them was really any fun and I got sick of seeing real life friends refusing to go do real life things because they had to camp and wait (for hours!) for the magic penis stretcher to reappear so they could continue on their quest.

          Still, I think they should just roll the development costs into what is covered by subscriptions. I'd be more likely to try more of the games if I could do it without having to buy anything.

          • None of them was really any fun and I got sick of seeing real life friends refusing to go do real life things because they had to camp and wait (for hours!) for the magic penis stretcher to reappear so they could continue on their quest.


            Even sadder was seeing everyone go crazy trying to get an epic mount. That's how they compensate when they couldn't get the magic penis stretcher.
          • UO has been going for a decade and still rolling. $15 a month over 10 years = $1,800. So they should have just shipped the retail box for $1,850?
        • Except that's not true. You can cover your initial development expenses with the monthly fee. Considering the cost of bandwidth in bulk, there's an enormous profit margin on MMO monthly fees. They don't use much bandwidth anyhow. Most of the rest can go to overhead (which should be relatively low) and development.

          Take WoW for example. Now, I hate most MMOs in general, but their pricing scheme really rips off the consumer. Not only do you have to pay for the box (and I should point out that initial R&D w
          • Except it is. Richard Garriot basically invented the MMO genre with Ultima Online, and has never been much of a company man. He ripped on EA, and has no reason to really lie about the industry. He's spoken on MMO's quite a bit over the years, and works for NCSoft. He helped oversee the launch of Guild Wars, City of Heroes, Auto Assault, etc. and has his new MMO title called Tabula Rasa, which has been in development for years, and years.

            When you write an MMO, you're coding both a client, and a server.
            • Love the moralistic rant.

              Love how Blizzard has this big "First month free!" plastered over the WoW box, but when I got home and was ready to play, it turned out I had to drive back to the store to get one of their 30 dollar time-cards before I could play my new game, only to find that I'm asked to level grind for days and days on end, with the justification that "People would win the game(they're continuing to pay for) too quickly if it was paced properly!".

              Love how I only continue giving money to companies
        • Blizzard would HAPPILY give out a copy of World of Warcraft free to anyone who asks, if it were a good economic decision for them. Its not (or rather, was not at launch and will not be at the launch of each expansion pack for a few years yet). In the US, good high speed bandwidth is rare, and WoW is huge. The most efficient form of distributing untold terabytes of textures across the Internets is to not use the Internet at all, but rather to burn it on CDs, put the CDs in warehouses, and move from wareho

  • Boo ads (Score:3, Funny)

    by Cervantes (612861) on Tuesday September 04 2007, @03:17PM (#20469069) Journal
    Take a game that's already made it's money back, and probably sells all of 2 copies a month, but hey, let's make some more money from it! Always with the string attached. Dang money-grubbing companies. *sigh* I tell ya, as far as I can recall, there hasn't been a game released without strings since Guitar Hero.

    • Re:Boo ads (Score:5, Funny)

      by QMalcolm (1094433) on Tuesday September 04 2007, @03:34PM (#20469297)
      'Guitar Hero' with strings would end up just being 'Guitar', I reckon.

    • Re:Boo ads (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Canthros (5769) on Tuesday September 04 2007, @03:34PM (#20469303)
      You're right. They totally remove the ads, and make it available for $$ or not at all.

      Honestly. You guys are a bunch of whiney, ungrateful jerks. The Ubisoft games aren't even that old--the Prince of Persia title's from 2003 and FarCry's from 2004, which puts them both in the $20 budget bin. And Rayman Raving Rabbids (which is conspicuously absent from the summary above) isn't even a year old. Seriously, what do you want for nothing?

    • Take a game that's already made it's money back, and probably sells all of 2 copies a month, but hey, let's make some more money from it! Always with the string attached. Dang money-grubbing companies. *sigh* I tell ya, as far as I can recall, there hasn't been a game released without strings since Guitar Hero.

      Activision gave away the original Zork trilogy as a way to help promote one of their graphical Zork adventures about a decade ago.

      Sierra used to do this very occasionally. They gave away "Betrayal at

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by DJNW (212838)
        The duke nukem 3D CD had all 3 of the previous duke CDs on it. sort of like the baen e-book thing, now I think of it
    • You have to be kidding. Out of all the games out there you pick the one which is just one giant ad. It is not only an ad for the music, but all of the "realistic" touches they have like buying the guitar are all just cleverly placed ads. Don't get me wrong..I own the game and love it...but sheesh, open your eyes.

  • An excellent policy (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Puff of Logic (895805) on Tuesday September 04 2007, @03:18PM (#20469083)
    I can actually get behind this policy. While I have a problem with advertisements in games for which I've paid full price, I have absolutely no problem putting up with reasonably placed McDonald's interstitial ads or menu banners if I know it's allowing me to play the game for free. An ad-supported, digitally-distributed model for older games is a recipe for success in my book and I'd support the model enthusiastically. I don't want to see it become the primary model for games, as I'm quite happy to shell out full price for a quality game with no advertisements at all. However, if someone were to make Freespace 2 (or hell, even the old Wing Commander games) available with this model, I'd sign up immediately.
    • Huh? I remember hearing a while ago that Freespace 2 was released as freeware. A quick glance at its Wikipedia entry also shows that its source code was made available. In fact, a Google search [google.com] will list a number of freeware web sites that have links to the game.

      In short, you've been missing out all this time. :)

      But don't expect the Wing Commander series to be released as freeware any time soon. It's own by EA now. :(
      • I didn't catch that C&C is also released by EA. *blush* Still, I don't see EA releasing any Origin titles as freeware any time soon. I'd love to see a revamped version of all of them to use today's technology. In fact, a great marketing tool would be to release the originals as freeware (do they run under DosBox?) while they re-tool the series to work under modern technology as a commercial project.

        Same thing with the old LucasArts games. Sam and Max are now under Tell Tale Games, so why does Lu

        • Still, I don't see EA releasing any Origin titles as freeware any time soon.

          Except for the crown jewels, Ultima IV, which was released as freeware about ten years ago by Origin under EA stewardship (if you can call it that).

      • But don't expect the Wing Commander series to be released as freeware any time soon. It's own by EA now. :(

        I got me a free copy from a disc that came with PC Gamer. I still have the original, of course, but it was nice to get a Windows-compatible version on CD without paying for the Kilrathi Saga pack.

      • Huh? I remember hearing a while ago that Freespace 2 was released as freeware.

        Thanks for the info! Unfortunately I was unable to find a single working link to a copy of FS2. It appears that I missed the window on getting a free copy of the game. In some ways, though, this illustrates my point. Instead of hunting around old freeware sites for .iso files or source code on the off-chance of finding an old classic, I'd be perfectly happy to get my classic gaming fix via an ad-supported service that delivers the content in a non-flaky fashion. I'm afraid the days when I could spend

        • Try this [the-underdogs.info] or this [hard-light.net].

          This game was definitely released as freeware . In fact, not only is it freeware, the source code was also released. It can be distributed as you wish as long and it's not for commercial purposes. It has been ported to Mac and Linux [icculus.org] as well

          There might have been a time where they had a window to make it officially available, but I'm sure that there are plenty of ways to get it. Just be aware that it looks like the games and cutscenes have to be downloaded separately. Because is i

          • There might have been a time where they had a window to make it officially available, but I'm sure that there are plenty of ways to get it. Just be aware that it looks like the games and cutscenes have to be downloaded separately. Because is it a story-driven game, the cutscenes can make a difference. I recommend getting them. This is one time where you can download via BitTorrent and not worry about some Big Brother "Let's-Sue-Everyone" company coming after you. :)

            Yep, the game is definitely freeware and you have my thanks for letting me know that. Freespace 2 is one of those games (much like System Shock 2) that I've periodically had a strong desire to revisit, and I delighted to have the opportunity to play it again. It looks as though the upcoming Tarr Chronicles [akella.com] may give us a more up-to-date space-combat game. Hopefully they can pull it off. Thanks again for helping me out!

      • Check out fsoinstaller.com for FreeSpace 2.

        I just downloaded everything last Saturday and I've been having a blast with it.
        Nice! Many thanks for that link.

  • It's a game-flavored ad (Score:4, Informative)

    by Fry-kun (619632) on Tuesday September 04 2007, @03:25PM (#20469193)
    I've downloaded Rayman Raving Rabids to check it out. There's just one ad - a pretty bad macdonalds one.
    You get the ad:
    1. When the game starts,
    2. Before every level,
    3. After every level

    This means if you play 3x 30-second levels you get 6x 30-second ad.
    I guess they looked at how the TV ads have been progressing in few past few years, added a quick spell of reductio ad absurdum [wikipedia.org] and crapped out the result.

    Funny part is, I might've actually kept the game if there were some variety to ads and/or they showed up in longer intervals - at least 5 minutes or so..

    P.S. for some reason they make you link the game to your ubi.com account...

    • Re:It's a game-flavored ad (Score:5, Informative)

      by ASkGNet (695262) on Tuesday September 04 2007, @03:44PM (#20469433) Homepage
      The ads are laughable. All of the advertising is done by DFHEngine.dll, which hooks D3D9 renderer to do its bidding.
      The main game executable has a call at the very beginning to DFHInitialize. Removing that removes all the ads.

      Enjoy.

      • Re:It's a game-flavored ad (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Fry-kun (619632) on Tuesday September 04 2007, @04:33PM (#20470247)

        The ads are laughable. All of the advertising is done by DFHEngine.dll, which hooks D3D9 renderer to do its bidding.
        The main game executable has a call at the very beginning to DFHInitialize. Removing that removes all the ads.

        Enjoy.
        Be that as it may, it negates the whole point of ad-supported games. If I were going to do what you suggest, I might as well just get a warez copy of the game in the first place. Not only would I not have to register and perform any extra steps post-install, I'd also get to use a torrent with great download speed (as opposed to waiting for an hour or two in the "download queue").

        I'm not against ad-supported games - in fact I think it's a great idea, especially for low-income gamers. I have a problem with this particular execution, though.
    • Well the $$ version of Rayman Raving Rabids has annoying animations you have to watch before and after every level, whether you complete it successfully or not (I'm guessing those are in this version as well); the ads can't be much more annoying than those.
      • You only say that because you've never seen... nay, *heard* the ad in question.
        To paraphrase a quote from some sitcom: this ad makes me want to put a finger through my eye into my brain and swirl it around.

  • hmm... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by XmasterX (847435)

    "you must live in the U.S. to play the game"

    why the european people never get the good things? :\

  • Yeah, but which AAA games? (Score:3, Funny)

    by RoverDaddy (869116) on Tuesday September 04 2007, @08:14PM (#20472965) Homepage
    Did they release any of my favorites, like TripTik Hunter IV, Roadside Assist - The Awakening, or Extreme Traveler's Check Speed Signing?
  • AAA = Triple-A?

    http://triplea.sourceforge.net/mywiki [sourceforge.net]

    Anyway, that's what I thought when I saw the headline...
    • Curse my lust for first postage. from tfa

      We are providing the original Command & Conquer Gold as a free download, compatible for Windows XP!
      Internet: Lots
      Me: -1

    • Apparently, if you burn the iso to a disc, and then follow these steps [ea.com][.DOC warning], it works. I haven't verified this though.

    • C&C Gold runs on XP; the instructions for patching it to run on XP are included on the download page. Apparently, the IPX networking code on the CDs doesn't work on XP, so they provide a patch that removes the offending code entirely. The other net play options (including TCP/IP) seem to be unaffected, although I haven't verified this myself (don't have XP on this machine, so I can't test this right now).

      You may also experience problems with the default screen resolution of 640x400 (graphics driver lock
    • Does anything?

      (Yeah, flag me as a troll... I don't care. It was a joke, and I am an Ubuntu user. Now the question is, will anyone with mod points actually READ this far. If so, please mod it as interesting. Consider it a social experiment to see if anyone reads beyond the opening comment without bothering to see the context.)

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Nephilium (684559)

        Don't you know that in order to be modded up for something like this you have to start the comment with:

        I know I'll get modded down for this, but...

        Nephilium

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