PROJECT: TEN-DOLLAR

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Remember when Oblivion charged money for horse armour and everyone shit bricks because they realised it paved the way for companies to charge money for things that would have otherwise been released as free content? Remember when everyone was 100% correct about that?

Welcome to just another step in making games more expensive over the long term. Publishers realize that the very notion of a one-time-purchase video game is a flawed money making concept; they have seen the power of a successful MMO and the money that cell-phone providers can earn. Not because they have more customers, but because they have customers who keep giving them money over and over.

This, of course, results in a change in the what we are actually paying for- you used to buy a game and own it. Now you buy a game and own... part of it, sort of, but only if you promise not to look at it or touch it or smell it, because that violates the EULA.

If anyone here is dumb enough to use iTunes, please go and read your EULA and licensing agreements for the songs you've "bought". Guess what? You don't own them in any way. You own the right to listen to them, but not even forever. That right can be rescinded at any time.

Download an mp3 illegally and store it on an external HDD and you own it. Illegally, but you own it. Download an mp3 via iTunes and store it on an external HDD and you own it just as legally- that is to say, not at all. iTunes has very quietly developed a system whereby you give them money and get in return absolutely nothing tangible- it costs iTunes nothing but a few servers (which are a negligible cost regardless of their size as they only grow based on how many customers exist) to provide you with this service.

Likewise, this "ten-dollar" bullshit costs EA nothing and earns them a billion dollars. They've already made it, otherwise it wouldn't be part of the initial package that shipped. It's not DLC, it's not expansion content; it's vanilla shit that comes with the box. So if they can sell what is effectively nothing at all (digital media, which can be reproduced endlessly for almost free) repeatedly, what could be better?

This kind of bullshit is the future; big corporations realizing that digital information is free and not enough people are dumb enough to pay for it. So what do they sell us instead? Rights. Licenses. Legality. Oh, whoops, did corporations literally buy the law at some point? How did that happen?

Developers aren't at fault here. We see EA as a developer (which they are, and a very bad one) and a publisher (which they are, and a very evil one that happens to publish good games now and then), but it is the publishing side that is at fault. Take a look at all the negative news media about video games and you'll begin to realize it's all publishers, all the time. The worst a developer can do is make a flop. The worst a publisher can do is charge us $15 for 5 maps for an FPS. Stupid people practically pick up shovels and pave the road for them.



edit: I buy most of my games over Steam because they are DRM free and I can pick them up and play them on any computer that has Steam. If I lose my HDD, I just download Steam and there are all my games again! Valve is pretty awesome.
kaempfer is the winner
I'd say that's a fairly ridiculous way to look at it. I haven't bought an EA-developed game in about five years, but I've bought lots of EA-produced games. The way corporations are set up it's pretty much impossible to avoid giving them your money unless you literally never spend money.

EA has a lot of development houses under its name and it doesn't make a lot of sense to stop buying their games because they couldn't resist the allure of one of the largest producers given them a ridiculously good offer for their IP. Like I said, I buy most of my games on Steam. Valve, in that case, takes over the role of publisher. Hopefully, more companies will realize they can avoid using huge producers to get their games out (Steam charges much less of a fee in their role as producer, I've heard repeatedly) and the momentum will swing to end-user oriented publishers.

Boycotting a company is easy, but boycotting a corporation is next to impossible. It is absurd to say we can't complain about how IP is sold to us, because it is just as absurd to say we can' complain about how everything is sold to us. Corporations have gotten away with this kind of shit for a long time, and they are slowly removing our ability to actually OWN anything. Why would they sell us things when they can lease it to us for the same hassle? The funny thing is that I'm not even anti-corporation, I just like to control ownership of the things I control and own, and fuck anyone who tells me otherwise.


edit: if you are really ok with "Here, take my money." "Thanks, take NOTHING AT ALL IN RETURN." then you are a mook.
edit2: I don't think you're a mook F-G, don't be a mook!
Semantics and technical shit:

You don't own games/music that you buy, it's still a license. Just nowadays there are ways of and a bigger focus on controlling that stuff (see Itunes, Assasin's Creed 2) so the difference is become more prevalent.

Steam isn't DRM free and they still give you restrictions. Steam games can also have game specific DRM on top of Steam's DRM. See Assassin's Creed 2 for an example. It is very unobstrusive and convienent compared to other online DRM measures though (compare against GTA4 for the PC which is an abomonation of a port on every level).


I agree with the message (this is just another restriction and it sucks)
That was a long and oddly angry read. I didn't really understand the relevance of intellectual property. When you get DLC it's accessible to only your account so It's there forever, like that of Steam. If you get rid of it you can always download it again.
Steam is actually really scary. There have been multiple instances where entire games have been deleted off my hard drive with no notice from steam. Yeah it's a bug, but that is just really really scary how the system can delete games from your hard drive in a second. Thankfully their customer support is A++ , but I wouldn't think of them as some incredible entity.

Reminds you of the ps3 glitch that happened a few months back, where you couldn't play certain games even when the system was completely offline. My SNES never did that :(.
*hooks up his NES to his TV*
*enjoys games*

Sometimes the past rocks.
*turns on computer and sets outputs to the TV and grabs PS2 controller*
*enjoys a much larger library of games that goes beyond the original NES with additional features like save states to save games that didn't have SRAM (or help cheeze the really fucking hard games) without dealing with hardware/cartridge issues*

Past mixed with present owns
DUCKS yes ducks in outer spaaaaace.
The best part of Ducktales is how nobody cares about 80% of the game except when it's the moon level (party because it's IN SPACE and partly because the music owns)
post=142990
Like I said before, though, if this "first buyer" content becomes something more, something that is vital to finish/play the game/enjoy the game fully then that would annoy me. The potential that this could happen is a little bit scary, but I don't see any problems with this particular scheme: All they are trying to do in combat the losses they get from the trade-in market.


It will. Give it a little bit of time, and it will. Especially if people don't complain!

@GRS: Yeah, Steam has DRM but I have literally never once had a problem with it. It is always like "HERE IS YOUR KEY JUST IN CASE" but I have yet to actually have to use it. It's got my back anyway!
post=142999
*hooks up his NES to his TV*
*enjoys games*

Sometimes the past rocks.


NES doesn't work anymore, old game favourites are hard to find unless you like ebay, have to use some crappy YOBO thing to play any of your games. Sometimes the past is OK. ;_;
tbh I usually don't bother and just play ROMs.... at least, that's what I used to do when I still played video games.
Lately I've been playing really rad shmups on an NES emulator at school with the speed bumped up to 200% for total radness (ever try playing super mario bros at 4x the speed? You will die on the second goomba every time).

Uh.. yeah EA is bad or something.
I actually had a dream about SNES games last night. There was also one N64 game, although I remember thinking "what's this doing here my N64 isn't hooked up!"
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