Is Bethesda becoming another EA?

[RhombusHatesYou]

You don't have to go all the way to 'merica, just to a country without a currency supported on steam then it defaults to US Dollars.

The Aussie version of Steam uses US Dollars... but using the numbers from Aussie retail prices. No fucking idea why.

So, any possibility of a holiday soon to Indonesia? Must be a short hop over there.

Meh. Even if I had a few grand spare to take a trip to Bali, once I got there I'd have better things to blow my cash on than games...


The interesting thing is that there's currently a Parliamentary Inquiry here looking into the whole issue of online retail and regional pricing...

The big push is to have 'geo-blocking' classified as a Restrictive Trade Practice. That would mean that it would be illegal to have code in place that takes the ip address of a user and use it to lock them into using a specific regional sales subsite, which is the very cornerstone for enforcing regional pricing schemes... which wouldn't have any effect on websites based outside Australia but would have a very big impact on software packages that do so such as iTunes and Steam, not to mention the publishers who so dearly love regional pricing schemes.

The impact would be because once geo-blocking was classified as a Restrictive Trade Practice, the companies involved would basically have 3 options - drop geo-blocking, stop doing any business in/with Australia, or accept that it would then be legal to circumvent geo-blocking and then circumvent any side issues that caused.

 

[Treblaine]

You don't have to go all the way to 'merica, just to a country without a currency supported on steam then it defaults to US Dollars.

The Aussie version of Steam uses US Dollars... but using the numbers from Aussie retail prices. No fucking idea why.

So, any possibility of a holiday soon to Indonesia? Must be a short hop over there.

Meh. Even if I had a few grand spare to take a trip to Bali, once I got there I'd have better things to blow my cash on than games...


The interesting thing is that there's currently a Parliamentary Inquiry here looking into the whole issue of online retail and regional pricing...

The big push is to have 'geo-blocking' classified as a Restrictive Trade Practice. That would mean that it would be illegal to have code in place that takes the ip address of a user and use it to lock them into using a specific regional sales subsite, which is the very cornerstone for enforcing regional pricing schemes... which wouldn't have any effect on websites based outside Australia but would have a very big impact on software packages that do so such as iTunes and Steam, not to mention the publishers who so dearly love regional pricing schemes.

The impact would be because once geo-blocking was classified as a Restrictive Trade Practice, the companies involved would basically have 3 options - drop geo-blocking, stop doing any business in/with Australia, or accept that it would then be legal to circumvent geo-blocking and then circumvent any side issues that caused.

Yeah, you've politicians and lawyers need to take a right good look into that, as if even in US Dollars they are playing silly buggers then something is definitely up. That's not down to anything like "oh herp a derp, exchange rates, tsk, gotta raise the price for them", it's (mainly) US publishers and US dollars right in the bank.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

The only difference is that Bethesda hasn't pissed off consumers in such a relentless fashion as EA. Sure, they made one lackluster DLC overpriced. That doesn't make them the equivalent of gaming's Joseph Stalin.

3 words: Oblivion Horse Armor.

True, but at least they acknowledged it was overpriced and made fun of it later on during sales.

Captcha: rtfghjgdfjhndfyjhnytf ( I kid you not, the SOLVEmedia accepted this for a ad captcha)

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

And don't give me BS about downtime and "hurr how can we get this content to you other than selling it to you" by patches of course, you don't charge for patches, they are automatic.

Hell, even as Free DLC... content expanding patches are probably a bit too 'old skool' for most companies these days - up there with expansion packs that added entirely new campaigns and printed manuals with more than 4 pages of actual instructions.

The "Gold Edition" would be released MUCH LATER, including all the later developed DLC in a bundle. But it would be ultimate.

Or they could call it the 'Enhanced Edition' and give it away to all previous owners of the game as part of a massive patch. If only a company had the vision and brass bollocks to do something like that, eh?

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

That lawsuit against Mojang was necessary, if they didn't fight the use of Scrolls it legally left them open to worse infringements.

 

[TheKaduflyerSystem]

Bethesda isn't a bunch of Raging Thunderjerks like EA are, they've had their poor moments (The ORIGINAL Microtransaction hell: Horse Armour) But you would have to try really hard to reach a level of dastardlyness to match EA...

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

Yeah, you've politicians and lawyers need to take a right good look into that, as if even in US Dollars they are playing silly buggers then something is definitely up. That's not down to anything like "oh herp a derp, exchange rates, tsk, gotta raise the price for them", it's (mainly) US publishers and US dollars right in the bank.

Considering the Dollarydoo is currently stronger than the Greenback, and in the past few years hasn't dropped below US$0.90, there's no reason at all for the 25-80% mark up on the US price that Aussies get slapped with.

The interesting thing, for other people at least, is that if the Australian govt is forced to take a stand against geo-blocking and regional pricing then there's a very good chance that the EU will else be forced to do something as well. Smaller over all mark up, yes... but a much bigger market with far more economic divergence.

 

[malestrithe]

Looking at one overpriced expansion is not a good enough gauge to see if one company is becoming like another. You need to look at overall business practices to get that.

inXile Entertainment made Hunted the Demon's Forge in 2011 and published it through Bethesda Softworks. The game did poorly so Bethesda closed up the studio and.... Actually it did not.

Rebellion is known for making painfully boring games and are published through Bethesda. They are still around.

I could go on, but Im fairly certain it would be a no.

 

[Treblaine]

Yeah, you've politicians and lawyers need to take a right good look into that, as if even in US Dollars they are playing silly buggers then something is definitely up. That's not down to anything like "oh herp a derp, exchange rates, tsk, gotta raise the price for them", it's (mainly) US publishers and US dollars right in the bank.

Considering the Dollarydoo is currently stronger than the Greenback, and in the past few years hasn't dropped below US$0.90, there's no reason at all for the 25-80% mark up on the US price that Aussies get slapped with.

The interesting thing, for other people at least, is that if the Australian govt is forced to take a stand against geo-blocking and regional pricing then there's a very good chance that the EU will else be forced to do something as well. Smaller over all mark up, yes... but a much bigger market with far more economic divergence.

Well, not any good, honest or fair reason I'm sure, but there is a reason best summed up by this jpeg why they would extort so much money:

"if the Australian govt is forced to take a stand against geo-blocking and regional pricing then there's a very good chance that the EU will else be forced to do something as well."

Which makes me think a deal might be struck with the publishers before it gets that far if only to protect their bad business practices in much more populous EU Zone... for the time being at least.

 

[Salad Is Murder]

My initial reaction to the topic was: "Bethesda's gonna' make games I want to play now?"

But that might just be the cynic in me.

 

[PinkiePyro]

Bit of a rehash of other posts but I have not seen any real red flags that they are becoming like EA

yea dawnguard is expensive for dlc but compared to the majority of game dlc its worth the price most of that cheap (and stupid) dlc is just new skins for existing stuff Dawnguard adds a whole new area and quest line not just minor stuff

as for the whole scrolls incedent thats not the whole of Bethesda note the developers put the notched pickaxe into skyrim

 

[Vrach]

Dawnguard - if you found the game for 30 euros on launch day, that's swell for you, but that was buying it from a retailer that was willing to give a discount, not buying the game at full price. The game cost 50 euros on launch day, so it's 2/5 of the price, not 2/3. Furthermore, this is just delivered as a DLC, in actuality, it's pretty much an expansion pack. Considering what people pay 20 euros for (Blizzard mounts anyone?), Dawnguard looks like pretty good bang for your buck. And if you don't think so or can't afford it, wait for a price cut.

Mojang lawsuit - up to the lawyers. Also, most if not all companies would do this. Protecting the brand name isn't unique to assholes. Oh, and stop acting as if Mojang is some poor little unprotected indie dev.

And... that's your whole argument? Right then. Moving on.

 

[Atmos Duality]

The only great sin Bethesda has regularly committed is not putting any effort into patching their games in a timely manner (or just "letting" their fanbases try to patch their games for them. Even when doing so may require deeper access than the programming will allow).

Also, bitching about an expansion pack for 40 bucks?
Let me sit here and laugh bitterly at the irony of it, bitterly because it makes me feel old.

Aw fuck it. I'll even let some of you join.
Show of hands: Who here remembers when games used to come with expansion packs?

Y'know. Before DLC. Before companies discovered there were loads of gullible fucks out there who would totally pay 10 bucks for a fucking skin.

 

[TotallyNotABot]

Fun fact about the Mojang lawsuit:

Bethesda has a copyright for "The Elder Scrolls" that only applies to video games.

Mojang wanted to copyright the word scrolls over every single media.

So, if Bethesda wanted to make, say, a comic tie-in, they would have to ask Mojang.

In other words, Notch omitted a very important detail when saying how Bethesda was "just picking on the indie guy".

Now, other people have bashed the rest of your argument enough, so I won't bother. I just thought this was a necessary addition.

 

[Pearwood]

Mojang wanted to copyright the word scrolls over every single media.

True, I think that's down to Mojang essentially just being one guy and a few programmer friends. I doubt they got the right legal advice when it came to their copyright, I don't think they did it maliciously. Bethesda were completely in the right though, I would say they should have just talked to Notch and sorted it without the need to go to court but something tells me they tried that.

 

[spartandude]

I think Bethesda is evil because they are making a Elder Scrolls MMO and not another damn Fallout game and can get away with releasing unfinished games like it isn't a problem. Those are my problems with them. Also 20 dollars for a single DLC expansion? That better be at a pretty damn awesome expansion.

Ok ive said this a million times before so this is the last

Bethesda is NOT making the MMO, ZeniMax Online is! This means Bethesda is free to work on other projects

 

[TJC]

This is exactly the reason gamers annoy the hell out of me. You are the one with the money. That means you are the one with the power to reward or punish business decision. If you had a product you want to sell, you'd at least try to gain a decent profit out of it and that is ANYTHING BUT evil. See, in a (not-evil) company profit usually leads to decent pay for their employees and investments into future projects.

If they notice that the product doesn't sell at the set the price will go down and they'll try again. and AGAIN, you decide whether to buy or not. To speed up that process, you can also write them a letter stating your opinion. Trust me, if it matches with enough people it will be heard.

If you keep crying, you only come off as self-entitled child that doesn't want to pay money for the hard work of others because "it's only data, right?"

In regards to the suitcase:

Mojang wanted to copyright the word scrolls over every single media.

So, if Bethesda wanted to make, say, a comic tie-in, they would have to ask Mojang.

In other words, Notch omitted a very important detail when saying how Bethesda was "just picking on the indie guy".

He said it all.

I don't get it. People revere capitalism and start going on the streets to fight any socialist notions like they're born from the devil's dick. But when a company tries to make money, people get their panties in a twist and scream EVIL. I just don't get it.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

So EA is a company known for their ugly business practices and general stupidity. Just recently they publicly announced that Zynga's recent stock troubles was due to not being able to "diversify" their product lineup -which followed the announcement of their eighth Sims 3 expansion.

Meanwhile EA has dozens of other games in numerous genres, where Zynga only does ripped-off social games via Facebook. See the difference?

In the recent days Bethesda appears to be taking some vile pages from EA's 'Big book of appropriate business practices', like the most recent PC release of Dawnguard - for 20 euro(that's 2/3 the price I paid for the full game on launch day). And the lawsuit against Mojang over a single word, which they lost.

I can definitely agree on Dawnguard being ridiculously over-priced (unless it's a massive DLC package). That said though, the whole Scrolls thing was just their legal department, not Bethesda themselves; and to be fair, it was probably one of the few cases of "We have no choice but to sue" that's actually legitimate (unlike when a certain Mr. Langdell tries to hide behind that excuse). Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't that lawsuit end in more of a draw?

 

[userwhoquitthesite]

Ok, before I throw myself into this, I need to clarify something.
Please note that I am talking about Bethesda the publisher, not BGS(bethesda game studios) the developers.

Right, moving on...

So EA is a company known for their ugly business practices and general stupidity. Just recently they publicly announced that Zynga's recent stock troubles was due to not being able to "diversify" their product lineup -which followed the announcement of their eighth Sims 3 expansion.

In the recent days Bethesda appears to be taking some vile pages from EA's 'Big book of appropriate business practices', like the most recent PC release of Dawnguard - for 20 euro(that's 2/3 the price I paid for the full game on launch day). And the lawsuit against Mojang over a single word, which they lost.

I fear that the recent actions made by Bethesda might in fact be influenced EA's general behavior over the years, and if I'm right that means that the piss poor practice of EA is causing some form of cross company peer pressure.

Any thoughts? (examples and counter-examples would be welcomed.)


Off-topic: The captcha for this post was "banana bread", delicious!

i paid 20 dollars, and thought it was worth it. life sucks for PAL

bethesda DID need to tender legal action against mojang. copyright law is a real ***** to deal with, and while mojang should have (and did) won the case, bethesda still have been screwed over by others if they hadnt.

a better example, which you ignored, would be the TES online game about to hit the market

A game that goes against the spirit and design of the games from their inception, which so far looks clearly to be an uninspired WoW-clone cash grab.

fuck that game

 

[SajuukKhar]

a better example, which you ignored, would be the TES online game about to hit the market

A game that goes against the spirit and design of the games from their inception, which so far looks clearly to be an uninspired WoW-clone cash grab.

fuck that game

Having played ES since Daggerfall I don't see how a MMORPG with a exploration focus is going against the spirit and design on the games. Hell it isn't even the first multiplayer ES game.

Also, if you look at the feature list, the ES MMO is more of a GW2 ripoff then a WoW ripoff. But I will admit it is a ripoff. but out of all the MMOs you could ripoff, Guild wars 2 is probably the best.

Though it is highly unnecessary, and a cash grab.
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snip

I don't see how charging 20 dollars for DLC that is twice the size of their previous 15 dollar DLC is EA like.

Hell Dawngaurd probably has the best price/cost ratio of any DLC/Expansion pack Bethesda has made since Shivering Isles.