Origin Boss Says Steam Sales "Cheapen Intellectual Property"

[Doom972]

Steam's method seems to be working quite well for the industry. Nobody is forcing publishers to sell their games there.
If EA wants people to buy games when they come out, they need to price games fairly and not just give all games the standard $50 price (and no game should start at $60).
Some "AAA" titles don't deserve more than $5, being fun but very short.

Random true story, there's a used bookstore chain around here that carries sealed software that's been ditched from retail. When I went in today I found stacks of Crysis 2, Mass Effect 2, Medal of Honor, and Dragon Age 2 with $5 stickers on them...

Where I'm going with this is, turns out that; that $60 price point? Yeah, more bullshit than I thought.

Consider yourself very lucky then. I wish I had an access to such a store where I live.
These prices are totally arbitrary and have nothing to do with the quality/quantity of content.

 

[PrototypeC]

Here is a little story. In 2010 a game called mass effect 2 came out;everyone was clamoring about this new installment of mass effect which some called it sub pare (The first). Has a sane human being I didn't want to play a game which am not familiar about the universe or story, but a few weeks pass and mass effect 1 was on sale(and I had some extra bucks)so I bought it and after finishing the game I bought mass effect 2 and 3 at full price. Moral of the story=That's how you get a fan.

Quite right! I did the same thing with Dawn of War, and The Elder Scrolls. If I hadn't gotten one for a huge deal, I wouldn't have become interested in the series enough to get the newest one.

The hidden message in here is that Origin is this huge martyr and we should respect them for putting the developer first. That anyone at EA should chastise US (because that's what he's doing as well) for buying cheap instead of chipping in a bit of our yacht money is ridiculous. Isn't this the same company that publicly announced that game sales were too high and that everyone should do their part?

Maybe EA should just function autonomously, and stop interacting with us at all. Lord knows their spokesmen aren't doing them any favours. It would take an evil mastermind to spin EA's strategies into a public good.

Stop posting that immature propaganda aimed at 13 year old teens

Immature propaganda aimed at 13 year olds, you say? Well this is EA we're talking about. Don't you think, at this point, it's only fair that someone else gets to do it to them?

 

[Starke]

This is exactly what we need to be doing - deflating the gaming industry. It's becoming big and bloated thanks to fuckpuppetry by EA, Activision and Ubisoft, all and one unfailingly clamoring for undeserved profit from the gullible fanbase they so shamelessly exploit.

Yeah, as a user earlier wrote, EA is so used to automatically having a monopoly over its competition that when it suddenly has that taken away (like right now with Origin vs. Steam) it just continues its poor customer service while twiddling its thumbs wondering why they haven't drove their competitors out of business yet.

When did EA have a Monopoly over it's competition? Steam has been around much longer than Origin.

I'm talking about how they're are used to having monopolies over areas like football simulators and having significant pull in the world of game publishing, but they simply refuse to adopt a new strategy in their rivalry with Steam, my problem with Origin is that they've rolled it out as if Valve's already been beaten even though half of the harcore Steam users out there probably wouldn't touch Origin in the current state it's in.

Honestly, the monopoly statement applies a lot more broadly in the context of games than it does in general. In general if you just want a game, and you don't care what it is. Then no, there's no monopoly, generally this even applies to genres. With the exception of sports, as you mentioned. If you want any old FPS, it's not a monopoly.

However, if you want to play a game like Mass Effect... It's a monopoly. There isn't any next best alternative. If you want an insanely vast environment to mess around in, you're kinda stuck with Just Cause 2. Even GTA clones differentiate themselves pretty vastly, superpowers? Crackdown. Insane setting? Saints Row. Gritty Realism? GTA4.

In some cases there are next best alternatives, don't want to put up with the bullshit price of Modern Warfare? There's always Battlefield. But if you want Modern Warfare with superpowers, you're probably looking at Crysis 2, without any alternatives.

Anyway, I'm just saying there's more validity to that statement than it first appears.

 

[thedeathscythe]

Humm, so keep a game at full price and perhaps make more money per sale but don't have a thriving community that plays it, or make it ridiculously cheap and having a flourishing community that expands exponentially not only through the price but through word of mouth and have a longer lasting selling title, rather than a more expensive one. I don't really see it cheapening the intellectual property, besides the use of the word to mean it literally being cheaper to buy.

 

[monkey_man]

Well I dislike Origin, I bought BF3 and it won't run, and a lot of people have the same issue as I do, but there's no fix or proper instruction on how to fix it. I also think the Steamsales are a very good thing. You might end up buying a game you would never have bought before, and actually like it a lot. And then you recommend it to your mates, and they buy it tentatively and then you have 4 more people etc...

I also really dislike the sound the Origin popup makes >_>

I also have like 30 games on my steam list, but that's besides the point. I'm a fanboy for anything Valve, and that won't change fast

 

[Amaror]

Yet another reason Origin will never be able to truly compete with Steam.

Well their servers are better than steam´s and don´t crap out when you don´t want them to.
Also the games launch faster.

Well it's pretty easy to have "better" servers when really few people use them (Those people, who bought Me 3, Battlefield 3, etc...) because there is no other reason to use Origins.

And really i don't care if my game loads half a second faster.

 

[dementis]

This is coming from a company who thinks a good ending is "Purchase DLC to continue the story". I really think EA and Activision are secretly run by Satan.

 

[tycho0042]

All I seem to read out of this article is "I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of my gouging your pocket book for every last penny"

 

[SkellgrimOrDave]

EA is by far one of the worst companies I know of for customer care and service, they don't want you to have a good time unless they can make profit from it. Steam and valve are obviously money-orientated too, it's how a business works, but their conduct is wonderful towards their consumer base. Steam sales are one of the things that keep my loyal to them. I like a company that throws their dogs a bone once in a while.

I hope that ea's gouging of cash from their consumers bites them in the arse sometimes. They deserve it.

 

[Skratt]

Somehow appropriate: