Dragon Age: Origins To Get Paid DLC Expansion — On Launch Day 241
BioWare's upcoming RPG, Dragon Age: Origins, is set to launch on November 3rd. Today they announced details about some of the downloadable content they have planned for the game. In fact, it's scheduled to become available on the same day the game launches, at a cost of $7. (The PS3 version will be slightly delayed). "Called the Warden's Keep, the DLC will add a dungeon-based quest to the game along with six new abilities, a variety of items, and a base where players can trade with merchants. It will feature a supernatural storyline set in an ancient — and possibly haunted — fortress once used as a redoubt by the Grey Wardens, the ancient order at the center of Origins' main storyline." There will be two additional bits of DLC that are available for free to people who have purchased the game new. One "adds a stone golem character to the player's party from the beginning of the game, unlocking numerous story options," and the other increases a character's defense against some attacks in-game.
EA rears its ugly head (Score:4, Interesting)
Seems like EA already is taking over Biowares customer friendlyness (usually it is 2 games until the EA shit starts to boil in the companies they bought)
RIP bioware, not that I wont buy Dragon Age, but I am not very eager to buy any expansion, I probably will wait until a collectors edition with all extensions comes out in a year or so.
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I have the same sentiment.
I will buy DragonAge for the PC for Bioware's sake and download the content EA forgot to burn on the disc from another site.
Re:EA rears its ugly head (Score:4, Informative)
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Paradox had pay-for DLC available for their game East India Company on the day it was released.
And the Steam game 'RailWorks' (or something like that I'm at work so can't check Steam) seems to be nothing but pay-for DLC and most of it costs a significant fraction of the original game's price.
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The bigger concern to me isn't the for-pay DLC, but the for-free DLC that you only get with a new copy of the game. This is a blatant attempt to cripple the used game market, and violate the First Sale Doctrine [wikipedia.org]. They are purposely crippling the character of anyone who buys a used copy of the game.
Re:EA rears its ugly head (Score:4, Insightful)
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Bullshit.
You want to put out DLC? Sure.
You put out "exclusive free DLC that only the first owner gets", you're intentionally crippling the game for anyone who buys used. Given that the game is being sold and that's that (EULA's having been routinely tossed out in court because anything in them violating the Doctrine of First Sale is unconscionable) crippling the resale is bullshit and borderline illegal.
You put out "pay for DLC" the day it comes out? That tells me that they pulled finished content from the
Re:EA rears its ugly head (Score:4, Funny)
You hear me, game companies? You do this "exclusive code for DLC if you preorder from Gamestop" bullcrap, I don't buy your game till I can get it used for cheap. You want me to buy it new, stop doing that crap.
I'm sure after reading your post some intern is worriedly running down a hall somewhere trying to pull the Gamestop DLC offer from Halo 5 before it's too late.
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You put out "exclusive free DLC that only the first owner gets", you're intentionally crippling the game for anyone who buys used.
Could you please explain how this 'cripples' the game? 'Crippling' a piece of software means you cannot use it, not that you don't get a shiny toy with it. You can still play the base game, the DLC isn't required to play and enjoy the game -unless it's a patch to fix bugs, but that isn't really "DLC". If your enjoyment of the game is solely based on the special edition candy apple red dresser for Sims 7, the jet black BFG in Quake 30, or the golden widget in whatever - don't buy the game, but don't bitch ab
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When levels are missing, characters are missing, storyline options/quests are missing? That's a crippled game.
Yeah, if you don't get a skin or two, tough cookies. If you're missing a major character from the game, or something of that sort, it's crippled.
Re:EA rears its ugly head (Score:4, Insightful)
Despite being a very big fan and supporter of used, sales, I must concur. First-sale doctrine says that you can resell your goods. It doesn't say that the manufacturer must give subsequent buyers the same perks and extras. That's like you buy a soda from Burger King, giving it to the homeless guy outside, and then him getting pissed because they won't let him come back in and get free refills.
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There is a fine line between "bonus content" for first owners and "crippled content" for secondary owners. I'm sure different people will draw distinguishing line at different places. But I'm also quite sure that EA/Bioware draws that line on the side of crippling the content for secondary owners. I sincerely doubt they thought, "Hey, let's give a bonus to the first owners," instead they were thinking, "Let's incent people to buy new by making the game harder if you buy used."
The core problem here is tha
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but to me in this case they're releasing non-free content on release day that they could have just as well included in the retail version of the game (well except for maybe the extra test cycles it might have caused and pushed the date back more). Still it does seem a little wrong.
Re:EA rears its ugly head (Score:4, Insightful)
From TF Summary:
The resold version of the game is designed to be harder (one less party member, and increased vulnerability to certain attacks), and includes less content ("numerous story options").
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Re:EA rears its ugly head (Score:5, Interesting)
Paradox had pay-for DLC available for their game East India Company on the day it was released.
Speaking of Paradox, the recently released Majesty 2 - published by Paradox outside Russia - doesn't have any DLC available yet, but it was stated that it will be available soon. Some enterprising modders unpacked the game resources, and found a bunch of new content that is already there, apparently only waiting for some bit to be flipped to get activated.
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The article specifically state that this DLC will not be in the Collectors Edition.
Re:EA rears its ugly head (Score:5, Insightful)
A guy from Bioware had some things to say about this on Blue's News. He (obviously) was very adamant about how the content had not been removed from the game to make a quick buck. Bioware has had a dedicated team working on DLC for a long time, working in parallel with the main game team. The DLC would not have been ready early enough to pass through QA etc, there was no time to have it in the game on release day; obviously the QA process for just the expansion is faster than for the whole game -- I'd assume the criteria are more relaxed, as well, if the DLC breaks, it is optional after all. There is free DLC on launch day, as well.
That said, the obvious question is, if the people working on the dedicated DLC team had been part of the main team, wouldn't they have had the resources to include more content in the released game? In that way, it still seems like they're "cheating" customers out of content. On the other hand, while it started out controversial, DLC in general is very accepted these days, and it seems arbitrary to react differently to it simply because it's released on launch day. Should they have simply let the DLC lie on a HDD somewhere for a few weeks?
BTW, the developer (Derek French, I think) implied they founded the dedicated DLC team after very positive experiences with NWN, which let them support the game for another couple of years, and which was very well received from the community IIRC.
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1. I think folks should wait to see if the game stands up on its own before declaring a foul here.
2. That dedicated DLC team doesn't work for peanuts, I guarantee.
3. If the main team isn't working on DLC, that means other games come out quicker.
4. This DLC is obviously optional. Nobody's forcing you to buy it.
Blows my mind how quick some folks in the community will turn on one of the most influential and important dev teams.
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Most of what you said was exactly the sort of thing I was thinking - if the DLC wasn't done in time for the game to go Gold then it *couldn't* be on the disk, so it's not necessarily an example of evil. However, regarding ...
Should they have simply let the DLC lie on a HDD somewhere for a few weeks?
I guess I'd have hoped that they'd have continued to work on expanding the DLC further rather than timing its release to start nickel and diming the customers the instant the game is released. If they'd kept working on it perhaps they could have made it even better (and it will probab
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That said, the obvious question is, if the people working on the dedicated DLC team had been part of the main team, wouldn't they have had the resources to include more content in the released game?
No. There's a certain point past which they can no longer add content to the game as shipped on disc, because they need to lock down the content for the QA process. But the artists and designers can still work on standalone DLC while the programmers concentrate on the QA process and bug fixes.
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Indeed. Also figure in the holdups of traditional distribution. A packaged game goes gold (final state) a month or two before it hits shelves. You have to factor in the CD duplicators pressing all the copies, printers making all the boxes, packaging and shrinkwrapping the units, shipping, and then add in some delay for inventory to arrive (and wait) at stores so as to have a synchronized launch day. All that takes time.
Meanwhile if they want, DLC can be placed on the net the day after (or heck if the sa
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On the other hand, while it started out controversial, DLC in general is very accepted these days, and it seems arbitrary to react differently to it simply because it's released on launch day. Should they have simply let the DLC lie on a HDD somewhere for a few weeks?
It may be accepted by some, but PC gamers, especially those that have been around long enough to have played Bioware's earlier RPGs, are definitely not accustomed to paying extra for small bits of content like this. Recall the scrap over the Oblivion DLC a while back. I can only hope that the DLC we get from Bioware is far better than what Bethesda tried to foist on gamers.
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Speaking as a developer that's gone through this process, folding the DLC team into the main team wouldn't necessarily have helped speed things up much.
There are a lot of different roles in game development (programmer, artist, designer, QA, each with dozens of specialties within them), and these different roles taper off at different rates as a project finishes up. Usually your art guys are done well before the programmers, then a chunk of designers and programmers come off, then the more of those, and fin
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Like the poster above you said, they have had great success with DLC via NWN. It's true: the 'Premium' modules continue to sell well for both NWN and NWN2, even though the original NWN was released years ago. Then there's the community development tools, that allow end-users to create their own modules. Bioware has official mods for NWN, NWN2, KOTOR and KOTOR2 (even though Obsidian did both KOTOR2 and NWN2).
To the other poster saying this is EA shit rearing its ugly head: Bioware did this before EA even bou
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Well, (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Well, (Score:5, Interesting)
This indeed feels like draining additional money out of the people buying the game. If they brought it out 3 months later no one would complain but this looks more like ripping off customers than anything else.
What next, basic game for full price which unlocks you the first levels and for finishing the game you have to buy at least 200 dollars of special items?
EA at its best, I am pretty sure this was not Biowares intent, but they were forced to do this by EA. This is not the Bioware I know of where the two bosses posted on Usenet (Baldurs Gate time) and talked directly to the fans.
Re:Well, (Score:5, Funny)
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Wow, almost made it a page and a half before someone equated extra content that you would have never even noticed not being there while playing the actual full game if Bioware hadn't announced its availability to a full game that is sold in pieces. Why don't you just throw in a car analogy concerning how charging for options on new cars is going to lead to cars being sold without an engine or tires until you pay extra for them and round out this load of tripe nicely? Oh right, Bioware fucked up and gave awa
Re:Well, (Score:5, Insightful)
If they brought it out 3 months later no one would complain
I'm sure *someone* would complain.
It is an interesting discussion. What is appropriate for new content release? Especially if that content costs extra. If Bioware already had this content done and finished, and it was always planned to be offered as extra content, does it make Bioware any more/less "evil" by releasing it on day 1 or releasing it 'x' days later?
The thing that leaves a bad taste in peoples mouths is trust. There's no reason to trust that this content is truly "extra", rather than a piece withheld from the original game. Another question would simply be, is the original game worth the sticker price without this extra content? Are you getting value for what you're paying for? We'll find out soon enough.
I can say, if Dragon Age doesn't offer massive amounts of time investment without the DLC, the move by Bioware to offer DLC on day 1 is going to backfire big time. If Dragon Age offers 40+ hours of epic RPG goodness without this DLC, it will change minds as to if this DLC was truly "extra" or more of a scam.
Right now, Bioware still have good will with their fan base. If Dragon Age fails to deliver value for the money (While good, Half Life 2 was considered to be too short and the episodes even shorter and caused some ill will towards being shafted for the price, but Valve came back and offered the original game for fee with the orange box, a very value stuffed package, thanks in part to the great experiance Portal became, and even allowed you to gift that part of the game you already owned to a friend. Much good will was restored.).
Let hope Dragon Age turns out for the better!
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Actually, that is not necessarily true. We can reasonably assume* that this DLC was created after the game was put into content-freeze for testing and QA. It was created after the game's production, but since DLC requires a lot less post-production fiddling, it's possible for them to publish both at the same time.
* and by that, I do of course mean "that's Bioware's story and they're sticking to it". [dragonagecentral.com]
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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they could have just raised the price of the game and stuck it in. Would make me feel less of a sucker
But it still wouldn't change the fact that they are trying to charge extra for what should just be in the game from the start.
This isn't an expansion, this is just a side quest that has been ripped out of the game and is now sold separately.
If EA gets their way we'll soon be paying for our RPGs on a per quest basis.
Not that any of this will stop me from buying Dragon Age (although I don't think I ll buy any DLC).
Which is of course the main problem. Dragon Age already has a strong following of BG/biowa
"Collector's edition" (Score:2, Insightful)
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This approach is not so different from having a normal and collector's edition of the game - there have been plenty of times in the past where the collector's edition gives you some in-game bonuses
I disagree. The only games I know of with extra in-game stuff in the collectors edition are MMOs, and the stuff is usually pretty lousy to compensate. Most collectors edition bumfluff is stuff like maps, coins, cards, making of DVDs, etc. But I have never seen meaningful extra in-game content given away with the collectors edition of any single player adventure game, and I don't think most people would stand for it there, either.
How can something justifiably be called a 'collectors edition' or a 'special
Re:"Collector's edition" (Score:5, Interesting)
So far collectors editions generally include vanity items, mild bonuses for the start of play - items that just show off that the user bought the CE, but don't have much impact on the game. Making DLC including an *area* and *new abilities* immediately splits the game into haves and have-nots.
This is less like a CE, and more like WoW when Burning crusade came out - you want to be a blood elf? Well, you can't unless you have the expansion. Want to give your character jewelcrafting? Want to go to new areas (let alone progress pass 60), you can't.
These expansions are fine, though even in WoW's case it really made second class citizens of those who didn't have the expansion. However, to do this on LAUNCH day is nothing short of a money grab.
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DragonAge is a single player game. Complaining about the extra content is like complaining your neighbour's invisible car, that you never see, hear or get into, is faster than yours because they paid for the turbo version.
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Interestingly, the only reason I cared at all about Dragon Age was because it was supposed to be basically the next Neverwinter Nights. When they turned it into a single-player RPG, I stopped caring. So Dragon Age is my invisible neighbor's invisible car.
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When the turned it into a single-player RPG?
It was always a single player RPG. From the very start. It was never intended to be anything else. It is the spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate (party-based combat RPG), not NWN.
On release day? Really? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, that should have been part of the game. Sorry, but where else will it end? Before you know it companies will be releasing half finished games, and charging for 'service packs'.
I pre-ordered this badboy in a show of support after their 'No DRM' statement. Now there's part of the game I'm going to have to 'pirate' on day one if I want the full game, so already there's little point to my gesture. I might as well pirate the whole thing if I'm going to have an illegal copy on my computer anyway.
I won't cancel my pre-order for now, but I'll be watching how this pans out.
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Aren't you making a huge assumption? You're assuming the DLC was something that existed when the game finished testing and went to manufacturing. If they had waited for this DLC to be ready before sending it to testing and then production, it would simply have delayed the game.
Instead, they've been working on this DLC instead of sitting on their asses while they wait for testing to finish, production to ramp up and shipping to commence.
And again, you do -not- have to buy it. Or pirate it. You could simp
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Aren't you making a huge assumption? You're assuming the DLC was something that existed when the game finished testing and went to manufacturing. If they had waited for this DLC to be ready before sending it to testing and then production, it would simply have delayed the game.
Aren't you making a huge assumption? You're assuming that consumers should be billed for how a company deals with its internal organisation and release schedule. Would you be as accepting if a company went 'gold' two months into the dev cycle and charging extra for the final two years of work? No, because that's ridiculous. If it wasn't finished when they went gold, then they should pick up the tab, not their customers. That doesn't change just because they went gold two weeks or two months before they wer
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There are some early reviews on this game, and all of them indicate that the game is extraordinarily long. If you like the game, you are getting well more than your money's worth, so they clearly aren't skimping on content in order to nickel and dime you out of your money with dlc.
Last year one of the majors proposed charging extra for the boss fights of a game. Everything you just argued above applies to that, as well. But I think we can probably both agree that this would be a bullshit system? Well, that's how I feel about DLC, and I think that it's justifiable, if only because DLC present the thin end of just such a shitty wedge. Especially release day DLC.
There is no justifiable reason to pirate the game...
You're absolutely right. Pirating this game is wrong, and I know that. But, it's not very wrong. It's only about as wrong a
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Granted, there have been mission packs before but in those cases they made the game and then worked for a few months to create new content etc. They could conceivably pass off the main game as a finished game. With DLC I get the feeling that they deliberately leave out c
Yeah.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Just another righteous indignation article.
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There is no DLC for movies, books or music. Imagine having the ability to buy additional scenes to the film. Or a better camera angle. I'd be pretty outraged. Similarly for a book - buying extra character dialogs or an additional page or two of adventure.
Personally, when I buy a game, and there is still tons of DLC, I don't feel like I bought the whole game. And games are already way too expensive in my opinion.
It makes me feel like a cow.
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I do respect that you feel like you haven't got the full game if there is a lot of DLC, though. But really, that game has to please you enough for you to buy the DLC so whilst it is one of the many examples of bleeding a consumer, you atleast have to be fairly happy with the original product before purchasing the accessory.
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Textbooks have DLC (Score:3, Insightful)
There is no DLC for movies, books or music.
A growing number of textbooks come with online extras available only to those who buy the book new.
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A growing number of textbooks come with online extras available only to those who buy the book new.
You are right. I should have made a clearer definition of DLC to only mean non-free DLC.
Free DLC is a good thing in my view.
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A growing number of textbooks come with online extras available only to those who buy the book new.
You are right. I should have made a clearer definition of DLC to only mean non-free DLC.
Unless you're talking about Wikibooks featured books, the DLC provided with a textbook is non-free [freedomdefined.org]. Otherwise, people could copy the DLC when they resell the textbook.
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Imagine having the ability to buy additional scenes to the film. Or a better camera angle.
Movies have been doing this for nearly a decade. Almost every film that gets released on DVD sees a basic version first, then a "collectors edition" follows several months later with director commentary, deleted scenes, etc... In fact, while people here rage against EA deigning to release extra content the day of the retail release, movie fans have been clamoring for such a thing on DVDs for quite some time now, as the current structure is intentionally designed to get people to purchase the DVD twice, fi
Except they are right (Score:3, Insightful)
That there is sick greed in other walks of life doesn't make it right.
I have an idea (Score:2, Insightful)
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EA have threatened to kill everyone I know if I don't buy this DLC- and as I've replied to your post this now includes you and the people reading this post.
At least it's something that is being added (Score:4, Interesting)
RE5 (Score:2)
Is This Different From Neverwinter Nghts 1? (Score:3, Insightful)
I bought Neverwinter Nights years ago and still play it to this day.
One of the reasons I still play it is because they released additonal content (way after the game was released). I didn't mind paying for additional modules because a lot of work went into it and extended the life of the game.
On the other hand - The DLC for Dragon Age seems to "enhance"/"influence" the gameplay of the main game.
Which to be fair is a bit naughty - to get the "full experience" of the game you have to buy an additional module!
If they released the DLC in say a few months later - maybe the reaction would not be so negative.
As far as I am aware there is no Linux version of Dragon Age - so I will not be buying it. The other reason I still play Neverwinter Nights is because it was well ported to Linux and is also the reason I did not buy the sequel.
Re:Is This Different From Neverwinter Nghts 1? (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference is that, as you mentioned,
If they released the DLC in say a few months later - maybe the reaction would not be so negative.
By releasing modules for NWN months down the road, it implies that Bioware devs spent time and effort, after the game was initially released, into improving the product and giving players more content.
With this and other recent games, releasing DLC near or even on release day implies some executive went "Okay guys, strip out 5% of the game's content, and put it online for $10 instead."
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For NWN they went out of their way to make linux and OS X versions, they released a server and client tools that allowed you to set up you own server, and there was tons of community made content. Because of all that stuff, I was still playing NWN more
I would wait for the Collectors Edition or GOTY (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh! I have an idea (Score:2)
Why not just charge a monthly fee to play a stand-alone, single-player game? Simply paying a lump sum at the beginning and playing from there is soooooo lame!
Sheesh. All this means is that I'll just skip buying on launch day and wait for the collector's edition with all DLC to come down to $15 used. Brilliant move, brainiacs.
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The point is that you won't be able to get the DLC if you buy a used copy, you would have to buy a new copy, or you have to buy the DLC separately.
It's a move against the second hand market. (Score:3, Insightful)
The point of this is not to combat piracy or to increase the price of the game, the point is to discourage people from buying it second-hand. The first owner will get two DLC pieces for free, but if you buy your copy used, you will not receive those DLC pieces, you have to buy them from EA, on top of paying for your used copy.
The proper way of looking at it is that the two free DLC pieces should be included in the full game, but that they figured out a way of robbing second-hand buyers of it.
I can see why publishers want to get money from the second-hand market, but doing that at the expense of their customers is incredibly annoying.
The solution to EA's "problem" (Score:2)
It's long been known that the price of a game is fixed - that is, that the amount you can charge for a boxed game on a shelf has a very definite (and mostly arbitrary) price point.
What we're starting to see is publishers trying to sneak past that price point with tricks like this. And we'll see it more and more. Single-player games don't generate a revenue stream, so you've been forced to hit the customer all up front for whatever you hope to recoup from your new game. It's just too tempting to try and s
What happened Bioware? (Score:2)
Nobody's holding a gun to your head. (Score:2)
How many of you expressing outrage at this shell out $15/month for some MMO, where you get very little new content for that $15 (as you have to pay for your expansions -- OK, EVE people can get a pass...)
The idea that they had a whole pie and cut a piece out of it and are now charging you extra for a pie plus what was once part of the pie is indeed upsetting. Some people seem outraged that this is being done on the release date.
Remember that the PC release date was originally last Spring, and delayed so the
The New Shit. (Score:2)
Here goes (Score:2)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the bulk of the comments in this thread seem to be to the effect of: a publisher is obligated to include all completed content of a game in the retail box at the ship date. The problem with this line of thinking is that it has no regard for what it costs to make that content or the fact that we, as gamers, are completely unwilling to pay more than $50 for a game (see the conversation on Modern Warfare 2 for the PC's price point), even while we continue to demand more and more fr
Sound policy (Score:2)
Gripe all you want.
This strategy allows the publisher to more effectively perform variable pricing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_pricing [wikipedia.org]
Variable pricing is a mechanism for maximizing revenue by charging buyers who are willing to pay more, more. Another method of variable pricing is the collector's edition of a game, or hardcover books.
This new method has a distinct advantage, however. When you purchase the DLC online, bioware's publisher receives a MUCH larger percentage of the take (basically 10
This is the New Irony! (Score:2)
"This is the New Shit", the song absurdly-placed as the new themesong of a fairly-generic fantasy world with a lot of blood, is actually a song lampooning our consumer culture. The lyrics refer to the "new shit" as some fantastic new product or service that the consumer must buy for arbitrary reasons...not because they need it, but because it's new. It's a song about aggressiv
From another perspective... (Score:2, Interesting)
This isn't about DLC, it's about used games. (Score:2)
Notice that the DLC includes free items only if you buy new. A party member, okay, you can do fine without that, but they basically said 'Everyone who doesn't buy this new, takes X extra damage from every attack.'
Nice, isn't it?
Re:False advertising? (Score:4, Insightful)
It is widly known that games are probably going to have exansion packs, and now a days paid for DLC, so that is not the shocker. It is that they are releasing DLC on the day of release and since time probably does not factor into when DLC is release no falso advertisment or selling an incomplete product.
Now if the cover art of the box included pictures of the DLC golem in the party they I would agree since the box is an advertisement of the product and they are showing you something that can only be seen if you purchase something not in the box.
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What would've happen if they had released a game like this 5 years ago before DLC was fashionable - given that they had enough time to develop the content for the game and the expansion pack in time for the release, would they:
- Not have developed the extra content?
- Included it in the actual game?
For all we know they developed the game, then went around looking for what they could take out and sell separately, took that out and are selling it as an extra. Given that EA is the producer for this game, I woul
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Actually it is an extra $15. The $7 is for additional content. The DLC that you get by buying the game "the right way" costs $15 otherwise.
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"This message was brought to you by Sarcasm and Troll Feeders United (or STFU, for you un-hip people)."
I saw the potential and just couldn't resist.
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And here I always thought it stood for "should the French unite?"
Because if an issue isn't important enough for the French to unite about it, then you should probably STFU. Then again, maybe this barrier is too low. ;)
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You may!
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I can imagine a situation like this in 500 years in a games museum:
Guide: This is the bare-bone version of the game Dragon Age: Origins, a very popular game in the beginning of the 21st century. This exhibit contains 20% of the game content from the original game.
Visitor: Why is it bare-bone, what happened to the rest?
Guide: It got lost.
Visitor: Why?
Guide: The distribution models in that dark age of information made it completely impossible to archive most kinds of software.. which is why our archives are s
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Considering how many people still don't like digital distribution, there still needs to be some way to put a disk on the shelf.
And you complain that this is some complex thing locked down to a certain retailer. It's not. First-sale DLC is easy to get, plug in the code in the manual and you're done. As for being exclusive for pre-order customers, that's a whole different thing entirely.
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It doesn't appear to be.
Steam has it's issues, true... but I find it a fair tradeoff to avoid bullshit like SecuROM that I would otherwise be dealing with, should I buy a real disc or from D2D etc.
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Alot of games on steam come with securom and other copy protection methods.
Such games include: bioshock, fallout 3 and Crysis Warhead.
However EA has released patchs for some of thier games that remove Securom from the steam version.
Also you can also find games with TAGES on steam.
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Ah, well I do not have those games (through steam).
Bioshock was a 'gift' - and I think I played it once. Crysis - not interested.
Fallout 3 - I have it, love it. Interestingly enough, this one has the tamest SecuROM available - CD checks only (and are easily bypassed by not using the launcher, and running the game directly... or as a side effect of using FOSE.
I don't have a whole lot of "popular" games really, aside from Valve's stuff.
I do manage to avoid a lot of the shit, if not all of it.
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Maybe when Linux (all distros) has more desktop market share than a Microsoft OS which isn't even released yet [w3counter.com] they'll begin to care. Until then, please feel free to manually edit your
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Thanks for being part of the problem. Linux users won't buy games, so games developers won't develop for Linux, so Linux users won't buy games, so games developers won't develop for Linux...
I buy more games than I honestly have time to play. All for them with native linux support.
Maybe when Linux (all distros) has more desktop market share than a Microsoft OS which isn't even released yet [w3counter.com] they'll begin to care. Until then, please feel free to manually edit your .conf files, fiddle with wireless device "firmware" stripped out of Windows drivers, and live safe in the knowledge that you're intellectually elite compared to the rest of the Wintards (like myself) who are playing the games you can only whinge about.
I haven't edited any .conf files for my system, nor have I fiddled with wireless devices. I havn't even installed 3rdparty drivers. I am aware there is some firmware thing going on somewhere below (as I presume there are on windows), but that is handled somewhere beneath the hood. You do come across as someone with an inferiority complex.
Horses for courses. Get Windows or a console for gaming. Until there is a unified architecture for 3D rendering on Linux (like DirectX on Windows) you're living in a dream world.
It's there, it's older than DirectX, and it's called OpenGL. And anyway, I alre
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Linking to WINE isn't an option; I don't want to spend 4 hours "fixing" it to get a game to run. If I can't install it and play in under 30 minutes, it's not applicable.
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Which games? I can't even get Compiz to render properly on my system (8800GTX, 2.4GHz Q6600, 4GB DDR2 RAM).
Compiz is a proof of concept. Don't use it unless you like to explore new desktop concepts, and don't mind living on the bleeding edge. Use KDE if you want a flashy desktop.
If you can tell me any website anywhere on the internet that will help me get Crysis, Far Cry 2, Wolfenstein, WoW, Mirror's Edge, C&C3, and / or Prototype running on any linux distro, I'll be pretty surprised.
None of those games are, as far as I know, natively linux games. So why should I buy them?
Linking to WINE isn't an option; I don't want to spend 4 hours "fixing" it to get a game to run. If I can't install it and play in under 30 minutes, it's not applicable.
as I said, I don't buy games that don't run on linux. Though I have, for various reasons, tested HoN and some other game on wine and these ran just fine, which is an amazing achievement. See how well windows will run a native linux application!
If I
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How does buying only your local provider's broadband encourage more ISPs to roll out coverage to your area? It doesn't; You make the most of what you have. Linux gamers play what they can get, I play what I want.
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The better question is, why don't coders make sure linux will run it (not, will it run on linux).?
You already know that it's going with be a game made to run on Windows. So instead of asking if they modified it so that it'll run perfectly on Linux, you should be asking why the people coding Linux don't focus on making sure Linux can run more games instead of features that no one (even the most die hard power user) uses.
It's kind of like this http://xkcd.com/619/ [xkcd.com]
And before you try to claim I'm a troll, I'm
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The better question is, why don't coders make sure linux will run it (not, will it run on linux).?
You already know that it's going with be a game made to run on Windows. So instead of asking if they modified it so that it'll run perfectly on Linux, you should be asking why the people coding Linux don't focus on making sure Linux can run more games instead of features that no one (even the most die hard power user) uses.
It's kind of like this http://xkcd.com/619/ [xkcd.com]
And before you try to claim I'm a troll, I'm a big fan of Linux and love using it on my laptop - but my gaming system is Windows (for obvious reasons).
The short answer is: For technical reasons. And I'd never claim you were a troll, please give me some credit. I merely asked, does it run linux? I promise, I won't hate anyone if it doesn't, I just will not buy it!
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