Anger With Game Content Lock Spurs Reaction From Studio Head Curt Shilling 908
MojoKid writes "Studios and publishers are fighting back hard against the used game market, with the upcoming title Kingdoms of Amular the latest to declare it will use a content lock. In this case, KoA ups the ante by locking out part of the game that's normally available in single-player mode. Gamers exploded, with many angry that game content that had shipped on the physical disc was locked away and missing, as well as being angry at the fact that content was withheld from used game players. One forum thread asking if the studio fought back against allowing EA to lock the content went on for 49 pages before Curt Shilling, the head of 38 Studios, took to the forums himself. His commentary on the situation is blunt and to the point. 'This is not 38 trying to take more of your money, or EA in this case, this is us rewarding people for helping us! If you disagree due to methodology, ok, but that is our intent... companies are still trying to figure out how to receive dollars spent on games they make, when they are bought. Is that wrong? if so please tell me how.'"
Re:Yes, it's wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
The market. (Score:3, Interesting)
I've bought more legitimate games for my PS3 than any other system. Want to know the secret? I pay $25.00-$50 per game. They ship from the UK, from OZGameShop.com There's no DRM, there's no bullshit. I put them in my PS3, they install, and they play. I don't have to be online to use them. I own 26 Playstation 3 games, I even preordered 2 of them and paid full price $70-100. That's more than every other console I own combined. If you try to force me to pay $60-120/game. I will stop buying games again. You will have priced me out of the market. I will prefer to spend my $500 on PC hardware, and crack your software. Because I can't justify YOUR prices. There's a point where buying a game is a good honest deal and I will buy many games. But then there's the point where you're ripping me off blind, and I will stop buying your products. It's your choice really. I pay well above average for the humble bundles as well. My first payment was $35 because I saw the value of what they wanted to sell. I wouldn't own any PS3 games or even a PS3 if I couldn't get the games I want for $25 each. You wouldn't have 29 sales of games, hardware, and controllers without that available. That's about $1200 Sony and it's publishers would be missing. Don't screw over gamers, and we won't screw you over. Stop acting like entitled children. You don't own our money and we don't owe you anything.
Re:Not on the disc (Score:2, Interesting)
Damned if you do, damned if you don't (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems developers can't win with day-1 DLC. If they release it normally, it's content that should've been released on the disc (even if it was gold or content locked before the DLC was finished). In this case, they're including a one-time-use code to get the DLC for free; isn't that better than asking ALL players to buy the DLC?
I don't see how this is worse than the other "project 10-dollar" schemes of having players of used games pay for a DLC that unlocks multiplayer or something, especially if the content isn't already on the disc (as the game developers claim).
Perhaps if they provided an online code generator that anyone could use to redeem for a free copy of the DLC, that'd suffice? It's worth noting that the PC version comes with this DLC already included, no code required, although there isn't much market for used PC games.
Re:Not on the disc (Score:5, Interesting)
Why should I have to go and get something that I have already bought, paid for and had delivered? Will they recompense me for my time and inconvenience? I doubt that but even if they did, unless they refunded the whole some by way of apology, I would still be pissed. This has all gone to far and I, as someone who had always been happy to buy lots of games in the past, download the cracked copy every time now because I do not want to put up with this BS. If I cannot play the game, when I want (i.e. no need for internet etc.) I would rather have a copy. If I am going to have to go online (to download half the game) I may as well download an entire game. I am not even prepared to put the CD into the drive every time I want to play (why should I? My CD drive is not internal!), I just want to play.
I have got about a cubic metre of games that I have bought in my room but now I download. I do not mind paying but I do mind having to put up with all the shit. If they provide good extras (manual maps etc.) I will buy it and download the crack. For me it is not about the money, it is about being able to play it when I want.
Re:Not on the disc (Score:5, Interesting)
How is it wrong to raise the price? This game is not that previous game you bought for the same price. In the same way Harry Potter is not star wars. They may come on DVD's but they are in no way the same movie.
And in short: you're going to go without. Good or bad the games industry is fed up with used games, and piracy. That means the entire experience is going to require you be authenticated with their service, constantly, and some of the core content will only exist on that service. In other words it's going to look at lot more like Steam, and a lot less like the 1980's.
Re:Not on the disc (Score:4, Interesting)
And for everything else, there's DnD 3.5.
Of course, the resulting sales failure *will* get blamed on piracy.
Re:Not on the disc (Score:4, Interesting)
It's attempting to bypass the existing business model, which has failed. You may not like what they're doing, but we're going to see a lot of failed attempts at new business models.
As to world of tanks specifically: You can buy with real money what you can earn in game through playing. You may not have been steamrolled, but you're there to make the experience enjoyable for someone who bought their tank. That's kinda how the entire game works. That doesn't mean it isn't fun.
Re:Why yes it is. (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think they are lying about anything. They are being very clear in what they are doing and why they are doing.
Do they clearly state that when their activation/DLC servers are turned off, you will no longer have access to the complete game you paid for unless you are still using the original install? Because, that's how this works.
Once you activate the content using the code on on the package, that code is no longer valid. So, that first install is the only one with the full content available.
Re:Dear Curt Shilling (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, look up 'droit de suite.' You may laugh. Or cry.
Re:Not on the disc (Score:5, Interesting)
No it isn't. It isn't a compromise at all.
A compromise is where both parties give up a little, to reach an "acceptable" solution, where otherwise there is an intractible situation.
Here, we have a game company pushing the envelope to push the transaction in its favor. Right ot wrong, this is not a compromise.
A compromise would be more along the lines of:
"we understand and respect the first sale rights of our customers who buy game discs, but also need to keep the lights on. Because of this, we have decided to offer the base game without any of the optional expansions for a reduced price. We reduced the price due to the extremely vanilla nature of the offering. The expansions can be purchased online as a downloadable content license for a fair price each. The single player basic campaign will not be crippled without the dlc, but the dlc does improve its enjoyability and replay value. You can redownload the dlc expansions any time you like, but they are tied to your user account, and are nontransferable."
Selling a dlc expecting game for the price of a full title, selling the dlc for premium prices on top of that, and offering some dlcs as special exclusives is *not* a compromise.
You are selling a purposefully deficient gaming experience for full price. This is dick move #1.
You try to make us all feel better by offering an exclusive dlc for "free". This dlc is designed so that second hand players cannot legally get it without buying another copy of the game band new. This is dick move #2.
The non dick-move solutions are as follows:
1) "exclusives" should be promotional only. This means "buy the game before christmas eve, and get this special novelty exclusive dlc for free!" (With the intent that 4 or 5 months later you offer the same dlc for sale for a modest price.) The only other time an exclusive dlc is appropriate is for a specific console vendor promotion. If you plan on selling a slimmed doen base game with the intent of selling dlc to make up for it, then you have to price your offering appropriately. If your game is super ultra vanilla without the dlc, offer it for 30$ instead of 60, and charge another 30$ for the dlc. If you want to bundle, then offer a "free" (ahem.) Download ticket for the dlc in the game pack marked 60$. Don't shut out second-hand buyers. Offer them the missing content for a reasonable fee. This way you stand to monetize the 2nd and 3rd hand sales. These are sales of the dlc that you didn't have to pay merchanising costs for. Instead of complaining that you didn't get those people to spend 60$, accept the 30$ they are spending on the dlc. (If they buy smartly, they can still buy used and get the dlc cheaper than new, which is why they buy used in the first place. People who buy used put up with intrinsic bads like scratched disks, missing manuals, beat up cases and the like already. Don't penalize them harder because you want the full 60$ from their wallets.)
In short: "required" (for the full game experience) non-transferrable dlc is *already* a compromise. Don't be a greedy whorish assfuck by dickishly witholding dlc content from second hand buyers that would happily buy the dlc from you, but don't want to pay your MSRP for the game disk. Don be a greedy whorish assfuck by double dipping your customers with a 60$ brand new disk that requires 20$ or more of seperate dlc to be playable. Those are not compromises. Those are being unreasonable, and you will hurt customer relations, and your brand, resulting in future lost sales.
The second hand market is a reality. Instead of pitching a hissyfit that you can't make only brand new sales, offer to service the second hand purchasers for a modest fee. Monetize the second hand market. Don't try to expunge it.
Re:Not on the disc (Score:5, Interesting)
F2P (Free To Play) does NOT equal P2W (Pay To Win).
League of Legends is doing it right; it's free to play, and everything except skins are obtainable, though paying makes you get those faster. I have no problem with that kind of model and have invested about €100 so far over the course of two years.
Battlefield Heroes on the other hand, now there's a game that's pure P2W. Sometimes I play it for a few rounds just to see if it has improved; everytime I find it worse than before. It used to be an awesome game. Nowadays, it's all about how much money you can spend on those über weapons... Makes me sad. :(
Re:Not on the disc (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Not on the disc (Score:4, Interesting)
OK, we're going to have this talk about RAH and the evolution of his political leanings. The man was complex. He was a huge advocate of the dissociation of social mores of sex and marriage from state regulation. He had homosexual characters in his books in the 1940's, and biracial couples in the 1950's. Group marriage, line marriage, and so forth were social norms in his works. This is not right-wing liberatarianism. This is... something else. Many of his ideas were controversial, but they became so popular during the 60's "free love" movement that unwanted hippies were camped on his lawn.
But he didn't "descend into right-wing liberatarianism". He started in extreme liberatarianism and moderated his projection of his views to sell books. As they became less political tracts and more entertainment, they moved more units. But his views didn't change - except during a painful divorce - which I personally could forgive him for having been there.
Re:Not on the disc (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Piracy is great (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, that's not entirely true. Pirating games looks shitty compared to Steam in my opinion.
* No need to find new crack every time the game updates (or even check for new version.. it auto-updates)
* In-game chat system, with one-click multiplayer join function (for those games that support it)
* Savegames are stored on Steam's servers and synced between machines (for those games that support it)
* Consistent screenshot / gallery system across games, with upload support to Steam servers.
* Game statistics and achievements, displayed online on your profile.
* Direct access to high-speed download of games, no virus risk, minimal game install process.
* No need to search around, try different downloads, find one that downloads fast, then find out if it has virus, then find out if it works... Just click-click-click-click-click, and it downloads, full speed.
Yes.. Steam can fail (server down, can not start single player game), and it's offline modus can really do with some improvement (you have to be online to play offline? What?), but overall it does give some value over pirating games.
Re:Piracy is great (Score:5, Interesting)
See, that's not true, Steam is a perfect example of why it isn't.
Valve has managed to create a DRM system that actually adds value to the game for the majority of users. Every single Valve game is just as easy to pirate as games from other publishers, yet they lose very little sales to piracy. Why do you think that is? It is because Valve makes buying from steam more attractive than piracy.
Re:Not on the disc (Score:5, Interesting)
This "take it or leave it" attitude is part of the problem. Aside from there being a lot of sly deception (does it clearly state on the box that you are buying a license rather than a game, and that it is worth less second hand, and that if you buy second hand you get a cut down version?) companies need to form relationships with their customers, and part of any relationship is a two way dialogue.
Customers have every right to complain, and in fact in this case it is absolutely vital because if they don't and the game fails to sell it will be blamed on piracy. We need to make it clear that the nasty DRM is what made it fail in the marketplace.
After a horrible delivery fiasco, I was forced recently to buy a textbook via an adobe DRM type encryption method. I will never do it again. What I expected was something closer to a PDF file. What I actually got was a broken PDF-like document, only viewable in a horrible viewer with the lack of a decent zoom feature, the inability to *print* pages that I need (it will let you print some of them, but not others, and it doesn't tell you before you try it), an incomplete product (compared to the physical book) filled with broken links to the publishers website, and a 2 hour headache finding the links to the prior version of the book to make it work in a cumbersome wrapper. I'm annoyed enough that I'm trying to get a refund on it, and may push it as far as going for a charge back from my credit card company under the defective goods clause. If anyone from Bedford/St Martins is reading this: You need to step up, and deliver what you promise.
If people are having DRM experiences with games anything close to what I just had with a DRM protected textbook -- they indeed have every right to complaint, and need to do it loudly.
Re:Not on the disc (Score:3, Interesting)
So he's not just some random executive, he's a gamer at heart.
A gamer who wants to badly fuck other gamers over to make an easy buck. It's utterly absurd that he thinks he has a right to perpetual profits after the original point of sale for a particular copy of a game.
He doesn't, and he's not attempting to do so. Buy the game used, and you never have to pay a single penny to the studio. If, however, you want additional downloadable content, then you have to pay for that additional content... in the original point of sale for that content.
Re:Not on the disc (Score:5, Interesting)
Not only that I have to defend Gamestop a little here - I know several people who work at Gamestop, and three of them are store managers.
Here's how it works according to the fucktard who wrote the article: "The remaining $31.99? Pure profit..."
Now, here's how it works in reality:
- On that one game, Gamestop got $31.99 in profit. That profit went back into the sales figures for the store to pay for new inventory and to pay the wages of the workers and the rent to the property owner (Gamestops are in malls or strip malls, they never own a standalone storefront building on corporate-owned land).
- On several other games, Gamestop plunked down $20-25 in either store credit or cash payout. Those games sat at the $45 price point for a while. Then the $40 price point. Then $35. Then $30. Then $25. Then $20. Somewhere between $25 and $20, the "pure profit" that the fucktard article-writer assumes turned into a loss.
- On even more games, Gamestop plunked down maybe $10-15. The same thing happened. Maybe they managed to sell it at $20-25, maybe they sold it at less.
The short version is, sure, on that ONE used title Gamestop got a net $31.99 profit. Maybe that was enough to pay for one worker for roughly 2 and a half hours worth of time if they're at the standard $12/hour. On a number of other titles, Gamestop barely broke even, or even lost money when the game fell into "crap it's old, get it out of here, chuck it in the $5-10 bargain bin" range. Because that WILL happen to some titles, even if Gamestop shelled out $20-25 for it when it was new.
There's a Gamestop near my location that was posting sales numbers in the top 100 Gamestop stores for most of Christmas. They just got word anyways that they are getting shut down in February. Apparently Gamestop decided rent in the area isn't enough to justify keeping the store open, even with fantastic sales on both the new and used end.
So before you vilify Gamestop, think about that. A lot of the people working those stores are actual gamers. A lot of the people working those stores are trying to make ends meet. And the dirtiest secret of all... the "profits" for an operating Gamestop store are nowhere near CLOSE to what Asshat McDouchebag writing for ShitHardware, a crappy blog site with a broken registration system, came up with by pulling numbers out of his lying ass.
Re:Not on the disc (Score:5, Interesting)
You obviously don't understand how the supply chain works.
If Gamestop sells a NEW copy of a game at $60, then they may make $5-6 "profit" on it. The wholesale prices on the brand new games in the box sent to the stores are HIGH.
This is why you will NEVER, EVER, EVER AGAIN see a single-purpose store that sells nothing but brand new in the box games and systems. You won't. Think about it - when's the last time you saw a Software Etc? Oh yeah they started selling used games before they went under. How about Babbage's? Oops, gone under. The margins simply will not and probably will not ever support a "new only" software storefront business model any more.
Instead, you have Best Buy, you have Target, you have Walmart, and you have the rinky-dink "electronics" sections of other department stores where they staff minimum wage employees 2-3 to a store, or if they get up to 4-5 then they have someone minding the REALLY high ticket items like plasma TV's and $2000 cameras.
That is the reality. Margins on brand new games SUCK. The fact that Gamestop will manage to have new releases and launch parties when Crap of Dookie: Modern Warfare 4: Beating A Dead Horse comes out next year is because the USED game market subsidizes getting the brand new copies into the store. And that's the complete truth of the matter.