Downloadable Content $$

[Newtype]

I found this on other fourm and i thought it was interesting.

 

with recent developments with EA and other companies using microtransactions, how will ps3 fair online with such companies as EA? Recently on the xbox 360 marketplace EA has been charging rediculous prices for content that should not only be free but no one should have to pay for. Example in NCAA EA has charged 2 dollars each for a tutorial on such things running or passing. Along with that things like the god father game. if you happen to be short on money in the game, you would pay real money just to have some more money ingame to buy that tommy gun you wanted. Also with the release of LOTR: BFMII they had did something similar. People who had preordered the game by a certain date got a code to get free maps. but those who preorderaround 2 months release(This is all during the preorder period before the game came out) did not get this code and were required to pay for these maps. what made that even worse is the fact that those maps were availble for download the day the game was released which gives the question, Will we ever get a full game? how do we know we gotten a full game?

 

now being that the live service is pay to play im going to assume that they are at these prices because xbox gamers pay to play. now since Playstation online will be free with a market place of their own and

Sony not regulating or so they give the impression the developers content. Could the ps3 network end up paying more for DLC that is cross platform since they do not pay to play? example Fight night round 5 xbox will pay $5.00 dollars for what ever, will ps3 have to pay $5.50 or more for the same exact content?

 

There will be those who feel they have to get the lastest DLC which will show companies like EA that will buy anything that you put out. along with recent poor quality games they have been developing. Of course we as gamers whether it be on the wii the 360 or ps3 can only do one thing and that is speak with our wallets or purses. now with that being said what is your stance on microtransactions?

 

Taken from a recent peny arcade article: " Loathing for microtransactions has grown so intense - based on brutal acts, still fresh in the gamer metamind - that it is even projected out into the larger culture. There's a few things going on here. As much as I don't want to talk about Electronic Arts three days in a row, if they're going to keep exposing their flank, then I'm going to take the bonus to hit.

They have generated a tremendous amount of ill will with their recent microcontent indiscretions. This comes up in the interview I mentioned before, but why Major Nelson, Avatar of Xbox Live must respond to it is beyond me. He didn't upload that **bleep**. A representative from EA would have made more sense.

 

It's happening on Microsoft's service, though, and these shenanigans reflect on that service. But what are they supposed to do? EA is the sort of company you should never dare refuse anything - even when their games don't work properly, via some mysterious process they soil the retail shelf. Certification for a platform is a highly politicized process. Electronic Arts is as big as it gets, and there is a threshold of corporate mass beyond which the laws of business become warped. So, no. I doubt Microsoft wants to expend goodwill clamping down on EA's wholly optional downloads. I'd like to see them stand in opposition to exchanging real money for Godfather Bucks, or buying the cheat codes that you enter manually on other systems - but, honestly? I'll bet a gamer more in the mainstream relishes those options. Scandalous, I know. But EA didn't get to be EA by putting out [crap] nobody wanted.

 

 

Every major platform supports microtransactions, and the objective - in every case - is to pile wealth in underground vaults. They're all going to push it for a while. All of them. You don't like it? You push back."

 

 

What do you guys think about this.

[The NZA]

(sorry newt, this topic was overdue and your post was great for it

 

I agree with the arcile: youre talking about EA more so than MS: theyre huge. They sell like hotcakes every year as masses of gamers buy the same sports titles with updated vicuals/stats, its not a clientele that's gonna be against throwing a few more $ at throwback jersies and such.

 

Now, when we start seeing more PC type shit - buggy games that need constant patching, or entire RPG sttages and such for a few bucks - i too will be up in arms, but again, all we can do is vote with our wallets and not support the product.

 

or, you know, copy it and its content. god, im a fucking revolutionary over here.

[Take Me To Your Lizard]

Yeah, we can always just refuse to buy the core title unless it is, by itself and without further spending, a quality product. Anything else they charge for on top, we can ignore if we choose.

 

That said, it bugs me to see things like this. Especially when 'pay to play' becomes 'play to compete'. I used to play Magic: The Gathering (yeah, whatever, I'm a nerd - it's a great game) but the thing that bothered me the most wasn't that they charged you crazy amounts for the cards - it was that, if you wanted to stand up with any chance of winning in competition, you had to have deep pockets.

 

Imagine a shooter where you're constantly taken out by a guy that's paid $10 more than you did for an incredible weapon. Now that would bother me. But I have faith that most gamers wouldn't support a title like this and it would die in no time. And we can always join IC in the ranks of the dirty software pirates.

[gunsmithx]

Something to keep in mind though is also the newness of all this, alot of these companies are doing this for the first time and quite frankly they are simply trying to find out what the market will pay for these things.

 

One great example is the the infamous horse armor for oblivion, as I remember it did quite well but caused such an uproar that they have put out much more roboust add on's as a result, but if EA puts these things out and enough people buy them they'd be stuipd not to keep putting them out till they figure out at what point the market says no.

 

Thats the whole question right now with alot thats going on, at what point will people say no.

[Stilly]

I'm going to borrow a post that I made in another topic (don't worry, I'll actually add to it instead of just using it to add to my post count). Anyway, here goes...

 

Imagine if PC games started doing the same thing.

 

It's 2016, and Half-Life 3 just came out, so you rush down to the nearest Google Gamestop to grab a copy of it for a mere $75 dollars (the average cost of a game nowadays).

 

Of course, you didn't buy the premium $125 dollar version, but you figure that there'll be no major change in your gameplay experience.

 

You install the game (and pay a small licensing tax of $2.50 to help pay for the failing "Piracy Wars" of 2007-Present), and happily start the game almost salavating at the thoughts of the wonders that you've been waiting for for more than a decade.

 

You start the game, and go through the basic training that's always there, and acquire your first weapon. The game becomes more and more difficult as you progress with that one weapon.

 

About this time you begin to notice small kiosks set up throughout the post-post-apocalyptic world. Curious, you approach one of these kiosks to find that it's an in-game arms dealer.

 

Cost of the next weapon up? Fifteen real world dollars. Sighing as you realize that you can't make it past the next area without that weapon, you begrudgingly enter your credit card number and purchase the weapon.

 

Of course, being a single player game, you have no one to sell that gun to, and have in essence paid an extra $15 for the privledge of continuing the game that you just dropped $75 on (plus the $2.50 service charge to install).

 

At what point does the "downloadable content" go from being optional to being required to progress in the game? I mean, of course it's not "required"...you don't have to buy it, but you can't really make it through a FPS with just your fists, now can you? At what point do they start charging us just to turn our consoles or computers on?

 

I know I'm looking at the worst possible scenario here, and I know I'm probably over-reacting to all this.

 

But it's not only that, let's say you buy a weapon, and it's completely useless...being a single player game, you can't just sell it to someone else like you could in a MMORPG. Thus they would have an endless amount of product, no competition, and would be making a buck off of just another service that used to be completely free.

 

Ok, I'm done ranting.

[The NZA]

while i agree with gunsmith that a) this is just the companies testing the waters, and b) companies like EA are gonna possibly be encouraged by the mainstream gamer to continue this bullshit, and its too early to get overly-worried about it, im still kinda with stillbored in that its a dangerous precedent that creates this slippery-slope of charging me for shit that used to be free.

 

im no fan of $50+ games, but nickel-and-diming me to death is even dirtier.

[Stilly]

...b) companies like EA are gonna possibly be encouraged by the mainstream gamer to continue this bullshit...

 

From Gamer Andy Dot Com:

 

EA Games are at it again, this time using Need For Speed Carbon

 

Yes folks, that’s right EA games are again attempting to use the Xbox live marketplace to its full extent. This time they have put out "new" content for Need for Speed: Carbon, a game which was released today.... yes TODAY!

 

 

But in an interesting twist it appears as though this content in its entirety weighs in at 108KB. This means that the content that you are downloading must already be on the games disk.

 

Oh and by the way I added up the marketplace points for all of the "new" content and then changed it into "real" money, would you be surprised to read that all of this content comes in at a grand total of *drum roll* $50 or €40 or 65 Australian dollars or £26. This is without a doubt the biggest rip-off on the Xbox live marketplace to date, and what scares me is that EA owns so many of the games that are yet to be released that this is just going to get worse and worse. The content they are releasing seems to be getting pricer and pricer as they release each game.

 

DO NOT BUY THIS CONTENT!

 

The only explanation for this is that people are actually buying this content or else they would not still be releasing it. So please people use your heads and speak with your wallet.

 

This is not like other marketplace content... like say Project Gotham Racing 3 (the most active creators of marketplace content) the content they release was not in the game in the first place, it was not locked nor was it unlockable via playing the actual game. EA is selling cheats and pulled content and Microsoft needs to step in and stop this but I will not hold my breath for that too happen anytime soon.

 

So below is a list of the "new" content on the marketplace:

 

* The Collectors Edition Upgrade - 800 Points

* Performance Drivetrain Bundle - 400 Points

* Performance Engine Boost Bundle - 400 Points

* Performance Handling Bundle - 400 Points

* Ultimate Performance Bundle - 800 Points

* Muscle Car Autosculpt Body Kit - 300 Points

* Autosculpt Tuner Body Kit - 300 Points

* Autosculpt Exotic Body Kit - 300 Points

* 1999 Nissan Skyline GT-R R34 - 80 Points

* 2004 Lamborghini Murcielago - 80 Points

* 2006 Dodge Viper SRT-10 - 80 Points

 

Right now I am in the process of checking if this content is actually in the current gen version of the game. Which judging by EA's track record in this department it would not suprise me if it was infact still in the current gen version for free.

 

It's already begun...

[The NZA]

jesus. id call for a ban on EA games but that'd be the shortest boycott youve seen since those "let's show these oil companies!" emails.

id like to add that, as a outright i wholly endorse the bootlegging of downloadable content, by any means necessary.

[Stilly]

jesus. id call for a ban on EA games but that'd be the shortest boycott youve seen since those "let's show these oil companies!" emails.

id like to add that, as a outright i wholly endorse the bootlegging of downloadable content, by any means necessary.

 

It's business decisions like this that make me wonder how in touch to reality the owners of EA really are. As evidenced by your statement, things like this only encourage (if not flatly endorse) piracy.

 

Even then, this isn't even "downloadable" content! It's just locked away on the disc, and you have to pay to get early access to it.

 

So...if you use a cheat, trainer, or hack to get it...are you stealing it? If you find a way around paying for the "privilege" of seeing the content early, is it the same as downloading a song of the internet? Are they going to take people to court over this?

 

How far does this go? I admit it's yet another "slippery slope" scenario...but they're not giving me any reason to believe anything good will come out of any of this.

[The NZA]

wait....these extras, theyre unlockable by feats in the game, or time-based or...or can you only unlock them with said code?

and if so, isnt everyone just gonna get the codes at gamefaqs? im a bit lost.

[Stilly]

Basically, they're "earned" based on how far you've progressed in the game (as far as I know...could be through feats in the game, certain number of races won, etc.). EA, however, is offering a 180+ Kb download on the Live Marketplace that unlocks it for you.

 

It's not a cheat code in the standard sense, but it works the same basic way. However, it's set up to where you can only use it after you pay for it.

 

So basically, if one were able to, I dunno, intercept that download and execute it on their own terms, they should be able to get the same result.

 

Or even let it out on the net.

[Newtype]

What makes it worst is the fact that you have the hardcore EA fans who are willing to pay whatever extra money that's needed to get the full games. I was never a fan of EA but now I hate them even more then before.

 

 

Some things I found on what people are saying about EA.

 

I know for a fact they realy don't do a whole lot of work on their games each year. But thats not the biggest reason people hate EA, it's because they are completely destroying the industry. By buying up all the right sand development studios, and completely shutting their doors to new talent and smaller developers, they are making it harder and harder for any new talent to get jobs or get games published, slowly turning the games industry into something completely uninteractive and closed off.

 

Maybe if they concentrated on working with specific consoles, they'd show improvement. When games get worked on, and they expand to more consoles, they lose their original cohesiveness and vision. But, of course, EA won't allow that. More multi-console games = more money. EA is all about money, and less about the quality of their products.

 

ea is ruining games and the idea of the xbox live market palce

you shouldnt tear apart a game and sell it back in peices

 

I've got to hand it to EA. No one else squeezes as much money out of spectacularly average games as they do.

 

EA is great..... if you like buggy games with spyware and patches that make them worse.

 

its amazing that EA has the most money and the worst games, isnt that just amazing!

[The NZA]

[Stilly]

The following is the original post from EA Spouse (Original Blog Here) about the conditions of people who work at EA. It's a bit long, so I'll throw it into spoilers.

 

Now, this is from 2 years ago, and EA has said they've changed their policies, but you all know how often that seems to do anything (especially with EA).

 

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

EA: The Human Story

My significant other works for Electronic Arts, and I'm what you might call a disgruntled spouse.

 

EA's bright and shiny new corporate trademark is "Challenge Everything." Where this applies is not exactly clear. Churning out one licensed football game after another doesn't sound like challenging much of anything to me; it sounds like a money farm. To any EA executive that happens to read this, I have a good challenge for you: how about safe and sane labor practices for the people on whose backs you walk for your millions?

 

I am retaining some anonymity here because I have no illusions about what the consequences would be for my family if I was explicit. However, I also feel no impetus to shy away from sharing our story, because I know that it is too common to stick out among those of the thousands of engineers, artists, and designers that EA employs.

 

Our adventures with Electronic Arts began less than a year ago. The small game studio that my partner worked for collapsed as a result of foul play on the part of a big publisher -- another common story. Electronic Arts offered a job, the salary was right and the benefits were good, so my SO took it. I remember that they asked him in one of the interviews: "how do you feel about working long hours?" It's just a part of the game industry -- few studios can avoid a crunch as deadlines loom, so we thought nothing of it. When asked for specifics about what "working long hours" meant, the interviewers coughed and glossed on to the next question; now we know why.

 

Within weeks production had accelerated into a 'mild' crunch: eight hours six days a week. Not bad. Months remained until any real crunch would start, and the team was told that this "pre-crunch" was to prevent a big crunch toward the end; at this point any other need for a crunch seemed unlikely, as the project was dead on schedule. I don't know how many of the developers bought EA's explanation for the extended hours; we were new and naive so we did. The producers even set a deadline; they gave a specific date for the end of the crunch, which was still months away from the title's shipping date, so it seemed safe. That date came and went. And went, and went. When the next news came it was not about a reprieve; it was another acceleration: twelve hours six days a week, 9am to 10pm.

 

Weeks passed. Again the producers had given a termination date on this crunch that again they failed. Throughout this period the project remained on schedule. The long hours started to take its toll on the team; people grew irritable and some started to get ill. People dropped out in droves for a couple of days at a time, but then the team seemed to reach equilibrium again and they plowed ahead. The managers stopped even talking about a day when the hours would go back to normal.

 

Now, it seems, is the "real" crunch, the one that the producers of this title so wisely prepared their team for by running them into the ground ahead of time. The current mandatory hours are 9am to 10pm -- seven days a week -- with the occasional Saturday evening off for good behavior (at 6:30pm). This averages out to an eighty-five hour work week. Complaints that these once more extended hours combined with the team's existing fatigue would result in a greater number of mistakes made and an even greater amount of wasted energy were ignored.

 

The stress is taking its toll. After a certain number of hours spent working the eyes start to lose focus; after a certain number of weeks with only one day off fatigue starts to accrue and accumulate exponentially. There is a reason why there are two days in a weekend -- bad things happen to one's physical, emotional, and mental health if these days are cut short. The team is rapidly beginning to introduce as many flaws as they are removing.

 

And the kicker: for the honor of this treatment EA salaried employees receive a) no overtime; b) no compensation time! ('comp' time is the equalization of time off for overtime -- any hours spent during a crunch accrue into days off after the product has shipped); c) no additional sick or vacation leave. The time just goes away. Additionally, EA recently announced that, although in the past they have offered essentially a type of comp time in the form of a few weeks off at the end of a project, they no longer wish to do this, and employees shouldn't expect it. Further, since the production of various games is scattered, there was a concern on the part of the employees that developers would leave one crunch only to join another. EA's response was that they would attempt to minimize this, but would make no guarantees. This is unthinkable; they are pushing the team to individual physical health limits, and literally giving them nothing for it. Comp time is a staple in this industry, but EA as a corporation wishes to "minimize" this reprieve. One would think that the proper way to minimize comp time is to avoid crunch, but this brutal crunch has been on for months, and nary a whisper about any compensation leave, nor indeed of any end of this treatment.

 

This crunch also differs from crunch time in a smaller studio in that it was not an emergency effort to save a project from failure. Every step of the way, the project remained on schedule. Crunching neither accelerated this nor slowed it down; its effect on the actual product was not measurable. The extended hours were deliberate and planned; the management knew what they were doing as they did it. The love of my life comes home late at night complaining of a headache that will not go away and a chronically upset stomach, and my happy supportive smile is running out.

 

No one works in the game industry unless they love what they do. No one on that team is interested in producing an inferior product. My heart bleeds for this team precisely BECAUSE they are brilliant, talented individuals out to create something great. They are and were more than willing to work hard for the success of the title. But that good will has only been met with abuse. Amazingly, Electronic Arts was listed #91 on Fortune magazine's "100 Best Companies to Work For" in 2003.

 

EA's attitude toward this -- which is actually a part of company policy, it now appears -- has been (in an anonymous quotation that I've heard repeated by multiple managers), "If they don't like it, they can work someplace else." Put up or shut up and leave: this is the core of EA's Human Resources policy. The concept of ethics or compassion or even intelligence with regard to getting the most out of one's workforce never enters the equation: if they don't want to sacrifice their lives and their health and their talent so that a multibillion dollar corporation can continue its Godzilla-stomp through the game industry, they can work someplace else.

 

But can they?

 

The EA Mambo, paired with other giants such as Vivendi, Sony, and Microsoft, is rapidly either crushing or absorbing the vast majority of the business in game development. A few standalone studios that made their fortunes in previous eras -- Blizzard, Bioware, and Id come to mind -- manage to still survive, but 2004 saw the collapse of dozens of small game studios, no longer able to acquire contracts in the face of rapid and massive consolidation of game publishing companies. This is an epidemic hardly unfamiliar to anyone working in the industry. Though, of course, it is always the option of talent to go outside the industry, perhaps venturing into the booming commercial software development arena. (Read my tired attempt at sarcasm.)

 

To put some of this in perspective, I myself consider some figures. If EA truly believes that it needs to push its employees this hard -- I actually believe that they don't, and that it is a skewed operations perspective alone that results in the severity of their crunching, coupled with a certain expected amount of the inefficiency involved in running an enterprise as large as theirs -- the solution therefore should be to hire more engineers, or artists, or designers, as the case may be. Never should it be an option to punish one's workforce with ninety hour weeks; in any other industry the company in question would find itself sued out of business so fast its stock wouldn't even have time to tank. In its first weekend, Madden 2005 grossed $65 million. EA's annual revenue is approximately $2.5 billion. This company is not strapped for cash; their labor practices are inexcusable.

 

The interesting thing about this is an assumption that most of the employees seem to be operating under. Whenever the subject of hours come up, inevitably, it seems, someone mentions 'exemption'. They refer to a California law that supposedly exempts businesses from having to pay overtime to certain 'specialty' employees, including software programmers. This is Senate Bill 88. However, Senate Bill 88 specifically does not apply to the entertainment industry -- television, motion picture, and theater industries are specifically mentioned. Further, even in software, there is a pay minimum on the exemption: those exempt must be paid at least $90,000 annually. I can assure you that the majority of EA employees are in fact not in this pay bracket; ergo, these practices are not only unethical, they are illegal.

 

I look at our situation and I ask 'us': why do you stay? And the answer is that in all likelihood we won't; and in all likelihood if we had known that this would be the result of working for EA, we would have stayed far away in the first place. But all along the way there were deceptions, there were promises, there were assurances -- there was a big fancy office building with an expensive fish tank -- all of which in the end look like an elaborate scheme to keep a crop of employees on the project just long enough to get it shipped. And then if they need to, they hire in a new batch, fresh and ready to hear more promises that will not be kept; EA's turnover rate in engineering is approximately 50%. This is how EA works. So now we know, now we can move on, right? That seems to be what happens to everyone else. But it's not enough. Because in the end, regardless of what happens with our particular situation, this kind of "business" isn't right, and people need to know about it, which is why I write this today.

 

If I could get EA CEO Larry Probst on the phone, there are a few things I would ask him. "What's your salary?" would be merely a point of curiosity. The main thing I want to know is, Larry: you do realize what you're doing to your people, right? And you do realize that they ARE people, with physical limits, emotional lives, and families, right? Voices and talents and senses of humor and all that? That when you keep our husbands and wives and children in the office for ninety hours a week, sending them home exhausted and numb and frustrated with their lives, it's not just them you're hurting, but everyone around them, everyone who loves them? When you make your profit calculations and your cost analyses, you know that a great measure of that cost is being paid in raw human dignity, right?

 

Right?

 

Emphasis is mine, I gave up on it about half-way through, though.

 

Also, Nick, what the hell is that thing?

[Newtype]

Right now I am in the process of checking if this content is actually in the current gen version of the game. Which judging by EA's track record in this department it would not suprise me if it was infact still in the current gen version for free.

 

Turns out it is free in the current gen version.

[Jables]

Y'all're bitches.

 

It's content that's free on the game, so if people care enough to pay extra for stuff early isn't it their prerogative? When EA starts holding customers over a barrel in cases where they can't progress without forking over more cash, then there's trouble. Inna meantime, this point scheme they have mentioned by Stillbored sounds alarmingly like my fantasy 'currency' which I reckon's a tops idea. When it comes to shit like this I gots no quarrel with , but don't you think a boycott's a little dramatic? Anyways, I'm not a flag-bearer for EA by any stretch(I play N4S & most recently Fight Night) but these guys are in this biz to make money, not blow fanboys. 'Member the days when cheeseburgers cost a buck? And the cream of the arcade crop were a dollar at most & if you were lucky twenty cents? That's shit worth campaigning for! If there are enough suckers to carry this idea then bully for them, but yeah, I'd prefer pay less for a game to begin with then maybe paying for a few extras keyed to my specific interests than AU$120+ for a heap of shit I'll not use twice.

[Stilly]

Y'all're bitches.

 

It's content that's free on the game, so if people care enough to pay extra for stuff early isn't it their prerogative? When EA starts holding customers over a barrel in cases where they can't progress without forking over more cash, then there's trouble. Inna meantime, this point scheme they have mentioned by Stillbored sounds alarmingly like my fantasy 'currency' which I reckon's a tops idea. When it comes to shit like this I gots no quarrel with , but don't you think a boycott's a little dramatic? Anyways, I'm not a flag-bearer for EA by any stretch(I play N4S & most recently Fight Night) but these guys are in this biz to make money, not blow fanboys. 'Member the days when cheeseburgers cost a buck? And the cream of the arcade crop were a dollar at most & if you were lucky twenty cents? That's shit worth campaigning for! If there are enough suckers to carry this idea then bully for them, but yeah, I'd prefer pay less for a game to begin with then maybe paying for a few extras keyed to my specific interests than AU$120+ for a heap of shit I'll not use twice.

 

While I would say that a boycott over EA charging users for content they can be patient for and get for free would be a bit ridiculous...however, it's gotten to the point to where there's no quality assurance whatsoever.

 

Games are shipped half-finished and buggy as hell. Games have been shipped by them recently that are so buggy that you can't even make it through the game (literally, some have been known to stop only half way through a playthrough).

 

It's not a matter of "blowing fanboys" as you so aptly put it, it's a matter of providing a quality product to the customer, that's it.

 

I'm not even for pirating their games as they're the physical manifestation of suck.

 

Now shut the fuck up or I'll break your legs.

[bishopcruz]

Turns out it is free in the current gen version.

 

That's the real fucking bitch in the whole equation. EA is charging a $10 premium on Next-gen games already, AND then charging you for shit that is already in the current gen version. That is horseshit no matter how you slice it.

[The NZA]