CliffyB: Microtransaction is Not a Dirty Word, EA is Not The Bad Guy

[Elijin]

I have two answers for this, one for the OP content, and one for the posters.

For the posters:

I paid for TF2 as a retail game, can I be mad it has microtransactions? I mean you all keep saying "We didnt have to pay for it, so its okay". But I paid for it, so I guess that makes it okay for me to be mad.

For the topic:

EA is the bad guy. But not for microtransactions. EA is the bad guy for years of games that require connections to EA servers whilst EA servers are slow, cheap and poorly maintained. Extra points for the games where you dont keep progress when EA server connections fail and kick you from the match.

Thats just plain poor product quality. The shame being its poor product quality tacked onto whats usually a decent product. If we must have DRM, at least put some effort into making it stable. Its been years EA, years.

 

[Slayer_2]

You see Valve releasing content for free.
You see EA Figureheads talk about charging players for in-game bullets.

Valve is not perfect, and I hate microtransactions. But if a publisher is going to do microtransactions, they might as well try to make it seem like I'm not getting ripped off.

You see valve charging for a myriad of items and turning a pay $5 once game into a "buy all these virtual items, yay micro-transactions" game. Yes EA is slightly more greedy, but it's not quite the Gandhi versus Hitler situation everyone makes it out to be.

 

[Vigormortis]

I have no problems with this statement.

Well, except one.

Yes, Steam took a long time to become as good as it is. It had no model to follow, because it was the first service of its kind (I believe), and it had to do some poking around to get to where it is today.

What's EA's excuse? They have a perfectly good template, but they didn't come up with a better product in any shape or form. So why should I have to have any respect for the latecomer that isn't as good as what's already there?

Even worse, EA had a Steal-like service before Origin.

Which makes Origin inexcusable. They had their own prior service AND a host of other DD-services (Steam, Impulse, GoG, etc) to learn from, yet they still released Origin in such an awful state.

Why anyone wants to defend them on that is astoundingly confusing to me

 

[Rachmaninov]

You see Valve releasing content for free.
You see EA Figureheads talk about charging players for in-game bullets.

Valve is not perfect, and I hate microtransactions. But if a publisher is going to do microtransactions, they might as well try to make it seem like I'm not getting ripped off.

You see valve charging for a myriad of items and turning a pay $5 once game into a "buy all these virtual items, yay micro-transactions" game. Yes EA is slightly more greedy, but it's not quite the Gandhi versus Hitler situation everyone makes it out to be.

Microtransactions are EA's most minor evil, though. A well-done system of MTs comes across like a donation system. You donate and in exchange you get some completely unnecessary appearance alteration.

MTs done badly are known in the F2P world as "Pay to win" (or P2W for short). Dead Space 3's MTs make the game much easier, which makes them more like P2W transactions, than donations. "Pay and be more powerful", not "pay and have a hat that does nothing besides looking cool.".

But EA's list of crimes is much, much longer than just badly implemented MTs.

1) Buying studios only to overwork the devs, force them to rush their products, and sacking them all when the product wasn't successful (example; Westwood).

2) Slicing parts of games off, so you've got to pay to unlock stuff that's already on the disk you already paid full price for (Day One DLC, numerous examples. Eleven pieces of it on Dead Space 3, for one).

3) Pressuring studios into releasing their games incomplete (example; ME3, BF3, DA2 and games as early as Magic Carpet 2)

4) Flooding the market with sequels. How many FIFA games is that now? Approximately fifty-eight? In only nineteen years?

And I'm sure I'm only scratching the surface with this list.

 

[lacktheknack]

I have no problems with this statement.

Well, except one.

Yes, Steam took a long time to become as good as it is. It had no model to follow, because it was the first service of its kind (I believe), and it had to do some poking around to get to where it is today.

What's EA's excuse? They have a perfectly good template, but they didn't come up with a better product in any shape or form. So why should I have to have any respect for the latecomer that isn't as good as what's already there?

Even worse, EA had a Steal-like service before Origin.

Which makes Origin inexcusable. They had their own prior service AND a host of other DD-services (Steam, Impulse, GoG, etc) to learn from, yet they still released Origin in such an awful state.

Why anyone wants to defend them on that is astoundingly confusing to me

Wat wat wat wat wat wat wat wat wat wat

Well, this is just plain old embarrassing now. How, EA? How?

 

[TheBestPieEver]

For the last few months, every time that The Escapist posts news about Cliffy B it only makes me feel sad because he is married to someone who is not me. This man has it completely right, every time.

 

[UsefulPlayer 1]

Anyone can see that most DLC packs are not worth how much they cost. Map packs are the most notorious for demonstrating this point.

You freaking know they aren't worth it and that's why you keep making them. You get so much more money because there is almost no investment to make DLC worth it and you're pretty much scamming the people that love your product. The microtransactions are an easy way for publishers to generate money without actually providing anything.

What I'm saying is that this isn't gonna continue forever and you can save yourselves by correcting now. You have to make the Microtransactions worth it. It also can't take away from the original product.

Otherwise you are gonna fail and we'll lose the games we love. So stop dicking around.

 

[Gameguy20100]

This is so bloddy stupid Im sick of Valve being seen as the god of companays and EA get treated like theve opened Pandoras box with every little slip but Its the same fucking thing all the Time, A company like bethesda or Netherrealms or 2k games (all good companys btw)Is gonna relse some microtransactions or Dlc then your gonna moan about it then buy and feel ripped off then your gonna call the company evil and threaten to boycott because it's always someone else's fault

 

[Neeckin]

The fact that there are people here defending EA makes me very worried

 

[Rachmaninov]

This is so bloddy stupid Im sick of Valve being seen as the god of companays and EA get treated like theve opened Pandoras box with every little slip but Its the same fucking thing all the Time, A company like bethesda or Netherrealms or 2k games (all good companys btw)Is gonna relse some microtransactions or Dlc then your gonna moan about it then buy and feel ripped off then your gonna call the company evil and threaten to boycott because it's always someone else's fault

"It's always someone else's fault"? If video game companies are slicing off parts of the game, so they can sell us a full price game, except with some of the disk seperated as "Day One DLC" that you have to pay extra for, despite already owning the disk its on... who's fault is that? We're blaming the company who did it. Not someone else.

Some people will always complain about games asking for extra money for more parts of the game, it's true, and not all of that behaviour is really "evil". If good extra content is offered, for a reasonable price, which took investment from the developers beyond the original development of the game, then there's nothing wrong with that.

But what EA do, is they take their complete game, and chop it up into pieces, so they can sell it to us multiple times with no extra effort from them. It is no coincidence that they include a grindy resource collection mechanic to Dead Space 3, only to offer us a way out if we pay through microtransactions. And that same game had eleven pieces of Day One DLC, which was all already on the disk I'd already paid full price for.

It'd be like me selling you a DVD, and then making you pay extra on top of the box price to watch the final scene. Underhanded, and it should be illegal.

And that's only the beginning of EA's crimes. EA are evil for many more reasons than just Day One DLC and Microtransactions. I'm not going to explain it again, since I've done so more than few times on this thread already.

The fact that there are people here defending EA makes me very worried

Me too. I think maybe people just don't know the full story.

 

[ThunderCavalier]

I agree with old CliffyB that microtransactions are not a bad word. That's... all about I can say.

The issue is that microtransactions tend to either be elements that improve the game's aesthetic if the gamer feels that he'd like to add some extra polish to his game, or are small boosts in stuff like MMOs or RPGs where the player, say, gets double exp or gold or some crap like that.

The issue is that CliffyB is confusing microtransactions with another term, DLC, which we tend to have a problem with. I wouldn't mind stuff like From Ashes from ME3 if it weren't for the fact that they contained a character whose entire evolution and insight into the Reaper campaign was practically required for anyone interested in ME's lore (see: any gamer that actually bought all three games and imported their Shep throughout the story mode). If EA was just selling me the ability to give Necromorphs party hats, I'd be on a pedestal proclaiming EA as some brilliant wizard that learned how to take the Internet and turn it to their advantage.

Instead, we can see that the CEOs at EA still aren't understanding exactly why we purchase some specific content. If EA dropped the microtransactions in Dead Space 3 and instead added an extra mode where you could play the game in horror-themed Sepia, they'd probably make even more money, because it's a novelty that people that love the game (and as you can see from hard critics like Jim Sterling, it has a lot of fans) will buy to make them love the game more.

 

[ksn0va]

I think people are going way too overboard on this, he's basically just saying that games are a business and people are buying into it. If you guys have to get mad at someone, get mad at those who buy Cod map packs for $19.99.

 

[Vigormortis]

I have no problems with this statement.

Well, except one.

Yes, Steam took a long time to become as good as it is. It had no model to follow, because it was the first service of its kind (I believe), and it had to do some poking around to get to where it is today.

What's EA's excuse? They have a perfectly good template, but they didn't come up with a better product in any shape or form. So why should I have to have any respect for the latecomer that isn't as good as what's already there?

Even worse, EA had a Steal-like service before Origin.

Which makes Origin inexcusable. They had their own prior service AND a host of other DD-services (Steam, Impulse, GoG, etc) to learn from, yet they still released Origin in such an awful state.

Why anyone wants to defend them on that is astoundingly confusing to me

Wat wat wat wat wat wat wat wat wat wat

Well, this is just plain old embarrassing now. How, EA? How?

Know what baffles me even more?

Many gamers, even some in this thread (like Akalabeth, for example) go on and on about how much "irrational hate" EA receives and about how we should "forgive" some of EA's transgressions, no matter how big and blatant. Yet, they seem simultaneously hellbent on chastising Valve for any transgression, no matter how small or imaginary.

Not to mention how often these same people call Valve fans "blind sheeple".

Hypocrisy and double standards are dangerous things, people. They only make you look a fool. Especially when you're preaching from atop your soapbox.

 

[Orks da best]

And of course the Valve defense legion comes out of the wood work to correct this horrible slight against their beloved gabenmessiah. If I can give valve credit, its for two things: one is developing something that is damn near a monopoly on digital distribution and then trying to squeeze the last vestiges of life from brick and mortar sales by having many games "physical copies" be nothing more than steam download codes in a very large box. And second creating the most utterly unquestioning devoted fan base ever, much of it devoted on a level that is less "this is a company that makes games I like" and more some kind of deep personal loyalty, witch is probably how Valve can get away with things that would get any other dev crucified. (i.e: crates, the wedding ring, charging you per round for MvM) Well back to playing Dead Space 3, boy "ruining the industry" by playing the games I like sure is fun.

I say sir, is your head on stright? cause it seems it is, unless most other people in this tread Thank heavens. Honesty ots people who support valve blindly that scare me. Who to says that when Valve take over the world that how many will accept it just because its valve? I say valve should be not be treated just because "they made good games in the past or they aren't EA" Its people like that who prevent anything progessiveness in gamers intereacting with game developers and publishers. Heck I say valve is sorta like a religion in some cases with how blinded they are.

That said if and when valve does fail or make a bad game, it will be so good to watch them valvies try to prove others otherwise. Their tears shall be sweeter than shooting up an entire army with my Orks and Necron allies.

 

[NortherWolf]

snip

Thanks for proving Vigormortis point one post below his, and without any hint of irony. You know dude, that there's hell of a lot more of "EA CAN DO NO WRONG! NO WROOOOOONG!" in this thread than there's *coughs*That other bullshit term you tossed out, right?

 

[Rachmaninov]

Honesty ots people who support valve blindly that scare me.

I actually don't think anyone here has blindly supported Valve. At least, not in this thread. I think you might be imagining it.

 

[Gameguy20100]

This is so bloddy stupid Im sick of Valve being seen as the god of companays and EA get treated like theve opened Pandoras box with every little slip but Its the same fucking thing all the Time, A company like bethesda or Netherrealms or 2k games (all good companys btw)Is gonna relse some microtransactions or Dlc then your gonna moan about it then buy and feel ripped off then your gonna call the company evil and threaten to boycott because it's always someone else's fault

"It's always someone else's fault"? If video game companies are slicing off parts of the game, so they can sell us a full price game, except with some of the disk seperated as "Day One DLC" that you have to pay extra for, despite already owning the disk its on... who's fault is that? We're blaming the company who did it. Not someone else.

Some people will always complain about games asking for extra money for more parts of the game, it's true, and not all of that behaviour is really "evil". If good extra content is offered, for a reasonable price, which took investment from the developers beyond the original development of the game, then there's nothing wrong with that.

But what EA do, is they take their complete game, and chop it up into pieces, so they can sell it to us multiple times with no extra effort from them. It is no coincidence that they include a grindy resource collection mechanic to Dead Space 3, only to offer us a way out if we pay through microtransactions. And that same game had eleven pieces of Day One DLC, which was all already on the disk I'd already paid full price for.

It'd be like me selling you a DVD, and then making you pay extra on top of the box price to watch the final scene. Underhanded, and it should be illegal.

And that's only the beginning of EA's crimes. EA are evil for many more reasons than just Day One DLC and Microtransactions. I'm not going to explain it again, since I've done so more than few times on this thread already.

The fact that there are people here defending EA makes me very worried

Me too. I think maybe people just don't know the full story.

Dude While I see your point Films dont take over 100 million to make Companys need to make a profit all those people are just like you and me trying to make enough money to keep up with rent bills etc would you really condemm a bunch of people to live on the street just because you didnt pay for a new gun or 2 in Mass effect 3?

 

[satsugaikaze]

I think downloadable content and microtransactions come across the gaming medium as a spectrum of varying substance. Each one released by any publisher, whether it be Valve or EA, has a different context behind it and what makes a "good" microtransaction seems to depend on the individual gamer.

Some people here seem to think a good microtransaction is solely one that might be mostly cosmetic or doesn't affect the gameplay at all, whereas other people percieve that solely as paying for pretty much zero substance and would rather prefer actual additional features affecting gameplay. On a greater sort of world-scale I don't think there's really one right way of what DLC or microtransaction content should be like.

As for actual proper context, I'm sure EA has been guilty of bad creative direction in the past, but to me I think the examples being touted aren't entirely reasonable. Dead Space 3 does the whole passive-aggressive thing with the whole "you could grind this game ooooooor you could just fork over a couple dollars to make your life a little easier". Sure it's irritating and consumer-unfriendly, perhaps, but you're not necessarily being deprived of the endgame or whatever analogy I saw up above.

Honestly, the more I think about it the more I believe that while Cliffy B might be flapping his gums as usual, I also believe that EA are partly just a symptom of gaming trends in big business. We hold EA one of the most accountable simply because they make themselves an incredibly easy target. Like someone mentioned earlier, they seem to have an incredibly incompetent PR department (and/or take much more heat than a PR department would be capable of) - and on top of that their percieved public image has been built by a consumer base perhaps not wholly understanding of the context/motive/reasoning of their business practices.

 

[Rachmaninov]

Dude While I see your point Films dont take over 100 million to make Companys need to make a profit all those people are just like you and me trying to make enough money to keep up with rent bills etc would you really condemm a bunch of people to live on the street just because you didnt pay for a new gun or 2 in Mass effect 3?

I'd not condemn them to the street, I'd suggest they stop bloating their own costs. The only reason games "take over 100 million to make" is because the developers spend that much on them. They could spend less.

I'd list you all the incredible games I've played that didn't "take over 100 million to make" but the list would be so long I'd be typing all day and night.

Expensive games =/= good games.

If cat food companies started putting their cat food in ornate golden boxes, the answer to their heightened costs wouldn't be to try every scheme under the sun to bleed more money out of its customers, it would be to stop using the damn golden boxes.

As for actual proper context, I'm sure EA has been guilty of bad creative direction in the past, but to me I think the examples being touted aren't entirely reasonable. Dead Space 3 does the whole passive-aggressive thing with the whole "you could grind this game ooooooor you could just fork over a couple dollars to make your life a little easier". Sure it's irritating and consumer-unfriendly, perhaps, but you're not necessarily being deprived of the endgame or whatever analogy I saw up above.

The analogy I made was more about Day One DLC, rather than microtransactions.

The problem with Dead Space 3's MTs is that passive-aggressive thing you mention, and I agree that it's not so serious.

Day One DLC is a much greater transgression. Take Mass Effect 3, for example, with a character removed from the game until you paid for the DLC, to unlock information that was already on the disk. That's what I was talking about with the "being deprived of the endgame" analogy you mentioned.

 

[satsugaikaze]

I was under the impression that the release date imposed by EA prevented Bioware from being able to complete From Ashes, and hence they couldn't complete the content on the disc before it had to go through QA testing.

I'm sure the restrictive release date was a conscious decision on EA's part as a publisher (since Bioware apparently had to *beg* for a few more months), but the full story behind these DLC may be more opaque and complex than we think.