Origin Boss Says Steam Sales "Cheapen Intellectual Property"

[Terminate421]

We just need to find the right price point for online stuff that is cheap enough for gamers but expensive enough for developers, I'd think maybe about $30-40 should suffice personally.

They could start with fucking off regional pricing first.

Okay then.....I was thinking for steam releases too.

Imagine if Battlefield 4 were released without regional pricing at $40, without origin's shitty policies, but you had to buy it off of origin, would you still buy it? I would.

 

[Loop Stricken]

EA Vice President David DeMartini says gamers shouldn't hold their breath waiting for deep-discount sales to come to Origin.

Clearly they don't want all those freeloading cheapskate comsumers clogging up their servers, so he's trying to scare everyone away!

 

[Don Reba]

[HEADING=1]Origin[/HEADING]
     Powered by EVIL

 

[lotanerve]

I'm a consumer that has bought a fair amount on Steam. Most of those purchases have been on Steam sales. I do however, usually average about buying 2 games a year at full price. (ironically, all 4 of those purchases have been EA games in the past 2 and half years- all of them through Steam) So it's not about training consumers to "wait and see" it's about keeping them buying on your site.

The EA VP really sounds off kinda whiny wondering why their old sales strategies aren't working as expected on the digital sales platform, almost accusing Steam of undercutting them. Unfortunately, EA hasn't figured out that I don't have to wait for Steam to undercut them. Regular B&M stores like Target already have. I saw Target had ME3 on sale a couple weeks ago for $35 while Origin still sells it for $60. Despite EA making some awesome franchises, they don't get it, and most likely never will.

 

[Fr]anc[is]

GOG's reasons were dumb, but this guy's reason is "EA would make less money." Boo fucking hoo. Maybe make your games worth the price and more people would be willing to pay full price.

 

[Micalas]

EA, let me tell you a cool story, bro.

The games I buy from Steam sales are, more often than not, games I only had a passing interest in. I really had no plans to buy it in the first place. Then some deep discount comes along and I think, "Meh...why not." Without that sale I wouldn't have bought it at all.

You have two choices. Take my zero dollars or take my $20-$30 and shut the fuck up.

As much as i hate to admit it training gamers to wait 3 4 months before buying a game is not good in the short run only in the looooooooong run.

Because no one in any other industry has waited until the price of something comes down before buying it. The game industry has the same issues of similar industries, but they're the only ones that spend 23 hours a day bitching and complaining about it.

 

[The Artificially Prolonged]

This is the same argument gog.com made but even though I imagine every developer wishes people would buy their game day one and play it, I'm sure they would take 10x that many people buy it at a reduced price and never play it as they still get the money in the end. And that is not even going into paying a less for one game and then later paying for the sequel or game by the same developer at full price.

However the difference between EA and gog.com arguments for me is that gog instead offers lower fairer prices all year round with regular 50% off sales and the occasional free game to stay competitive, while EA sound like they want to keep the prices of their game artificially high (which they could easily do which origin exclusive games at least). As much as I despise EA I would like a real competitor to Steam as monopolies are not good for anyone in the long run. However EA has failed to grasp that Steam is the market leader with over a decade on them, in order to beat them you need to do what works for them and then go the extra mile to make your service better. This is something Origin has failed to do continually since it's release.

 

[Treblaine]

Reason number 347 that Origin can fuck itself.

I had that on my computer for all of 12 hours while playing ME3 and I felt dirty the whole time.

Reasons 1-346 being hate EA because everyone else does?

Oh using origin as spyware (not like steam hardware surveys), the petty pulling of games from steam, claiming to be "indie", rushing deadlines, broken PC-ports, ridiculous premium DLC doubling price of game for all content, browser launch, online pass AND renting out servers = paying twice, serious idea of charging for bullets, always online, Mass Effect Cerberus BS, banning people from ALL of the games they got on origin for raising an issue on forums, abuse of staff with hiring and firing racket, no guarantee of game access if Origin fail (and likely considering EA's ski-slope share price), annual sports games with mere roster update, destroying LucasArts, butchering the Command & Conquer series, commissioning Bioware to rip off WoW with SWTOR, destroying the wonderful developer People Can Fly to make a trash game Bulletstorm with "Cliffy B", Fire 17% of their workforce on the same day they buy a rinky-dink casual game developer for an over-valued quarter-of-a-Billion dollars, Ruining the Ultima Series (for greed), shutting down Origin after abusing the company then whoring out their name, terrible employee treatment to the point they boast of a meagre 13% increase in morale (for a survey that THEY made and rated), terrible and counter-productive ad-campaigns that denigrate the entire industry, endless stream of "me too" derivatives (Dante's Inferno, BF3), Axing promising franchises like Mirror's Edge possible sequel...

Do I need to go on?

Many of these are just titles of multiple individual and repeated problems and these are just the ones that I can think of, it is FAR from comprehensive. Everyone else Hates EA for good reason. It was voted the worst company in America by the most reputable consumer accountability board. Extra Credits has written an open letter to them begging them to stop.

EA is a HORRIBLE publisher. I briefly baulked at the idea of Bungie going to work for Activision but now I'm bloody glad they didn't go with EA. By fugg, EA have been VIOLATING the pooch so badly for so long now. Initially they were just incompetent, now they are down right destructive. Even if it isn't "that bad" it is still one of the worst publisher's in the business.

And Don't say "they must be doing something right" their stock price has CRASHED and is continuing to fall and has been for a while.

 

[Scow2]

Poor EA. They aren't happy with Origin's competitiveness and now resort to throwing around weak criticism to boost their ego. They really are hopeless.

Actually, they're merely echoing something Good Old Games already said a few weeks ago.

 

[Steve the Pocket]

But I have to hand it to EA, they really are a HORRIBLE publishers, and it's awful how many decent developers work under them and ruin them. I'm actually totally freaking OK with Activision now.

Just because one company is evil doesn't mean another is suddenly good. You're allowed to hate more than one.

We just need to find the right price point for online stuff that is cheap enough for gamers but expensive enough for developers, I'd think maybe about $30-40 should suffice personally.

They could start with fucking off regional pricing first.

I question how that would work with exchange rates in constant flux. If the dollar falls against the euro, for example, do they make every game cheaper in Europe or more expensive in America? What about if the euro falls against the dollar the next week? As long as there are multiple currencies in the world, there will always be regional pricing.

 

[llubtoille]

For me at least, whether I buy a game on release at full price or whether I choose to wait for a sale depends on how much I want the game.

so two scenarios, current world vs no steam sales world

Current world
game 1 - I really want and buy it full price when it comes out
game 2 - I'm somewhat interested in but unwilling to pay full price I'll wait for it to go on sale.

No steam sales world
game 1 - I buy on release
game 2 - I don't buy as my desire for it never exceeds the cost of purchase.

 

[Johnson McGee]

I totally agree that we shouldn't have sales with deep discounts. It would be way better if the discounts were permanent.

Intellectual property such as games have a steep depreciation since as they become older they face more competition from new games that come out, they start to lose their multiplayer communities, etc.

In the most extreme example, how likely was someone to buy COD Black Ops once MW3 came out, even though at the time they had almost the same price?

I think it is pretty delusional that companies like EA keep their prices so high for so long after a game's release. If they gradually lowered the price over time then these huge sales wouldn't be so effective or necessary.

 

[Treblaine]

But I have to hand it to EA, they really are a HORRIBLE publishers, and it's awful how many decent developers work under them and ruin them. I'm actually totally freaking OK with Activision now.

Just because one company is evil doesn't mean another is suddenly good. You're allowed to hate more than one.

True, but I realise that Activision is merely incompetent to the point where I am "OK" with Bungie being in merely a limited partnership with Activison for their new game.

Activision isn't holding many talented studios and running them into the ground. They just have those studios working on CoD games and a stream of movie-licence games from studios that weren't exactly shooting for the moon. I don't care about CoD or movie licence games.

I never said I liked Activison but I never said I still hated them, so let me make it clear, I do NOT like Activison but I just don't care about them. They are doing their own little silly thing with CoD and they aren't ruining everything ELSE like EA are who are gobbling up so many studios and running them into the ground. Or launching a HORRIBLE service like Origin, instead Activision is really pushing Steamworks that works great... if only COD's multiplayer modes weren't fundamentally broken (i.e. domination mode is just a broken KOTH mode) or derivative (See Counterstrike).

Activision dropped that Sleeping Dogs game, but they JUST dropped it. They didn't try to kill it like EA repeatedly does. The titles they abandon they liquidate the studio and hold the rights stopping any further progress with the game.

So Activison aren't trying to be bad, they are trying to do the right thing they are just utter hacks. EA is deliberately and knowingly bad.

 

[Don Reba]

I think it would have been really silly for anybody to ever expect EA to do the kind of sales that steam does. Steam is able to do them for the same reason places like walmart and target can. When they put stuff on sale its not them that is eating the difference its the guys who made the product. EA on the other hand is the guy who paid to make the product.

There are no differences to eat up in digital distribution. It costs nothing to produce a copy of a game. Steam is not giving sales out of the goodness of its heart, but simply because it is very profitable. Players buy many more games than they would otherwise. Valve explains this in the employee manual.

Now, EA's motivation is a mystery. It looks like they just genuinely hate gamers. Their policies are sure not helping their stock.

 

[Nalgas D. Lemur]

I haven't seen any devs express that these sales are really.a detriment to them..

Valve has pretty extensive stats that suggest that the sales are rather helpful most of the time and uses that info to help people price their games to maximize sales/profit if they want, both for the regular and sale prices. The devs I've talked to have found Steam sales to be far from detrimental. In fact, if you take advantage of them properly, especially with indie games, you can do crazy things like make several times more sales in a single day than in an average month. And that's measured by profit, not number of units sold, despite being sold at 75% off. It works for more than just indie games though. That's why Valve started doing it with their own games in the first place when the numbers from the L4D2 experiment showed how incredibly well it worked.

 

[MegaManOfNumbers]

TRANSLATION:

"We will never have sales, and we will continue to have a monopoly of EA games for PC. Now shut up and give me your money!"

 

[MegaManOfNumbers]

But I have to hand it to EA, they really are a HORRIBLE publishers, and it's awful how many decent developers work under them and ruin them. I'm actually totally freaking OK with Activision now.

Just because one company is evil doesn't mean another is suddenly good. You're allowed to hate more than one.

True, but I realise that Activision is merely incompetent to the point where I am "OK" with Bungie being in merely a limited partnership with Activison for their new game.

Activision isn't holding many talented studios and running them into the ground. They just have those studios working on CoD games and a stream of movie-licence games from studios that weren't exactly shooting for the moon. I don't care about CoD or movie licence games.

I never said I liked Activison but I never said I still hated them, so let me make it clear, I do NOT like Activison but I just don't care about them. They are doing their own little silly thing with CoD and they aren't ruining everything ELSE like EA are who are gobbling up so many studios and running them into the ground. Or launching a HORRIBLE service like Origin, instead Activision is really pushing Steamworks that works great... if only COD's multiplayer modes weren't fundamentally broken (i.e. domination mode is just a broken KOTH mode) or derivative (See Counterstrike).

Activision dropped that Sleeping Dogs game, but they JUST dropped it. They didn't try to kill it like EA repeatedly does. The titles they abandon they liquidate the studio and hold the rights stopping any further progress with the game.

So Activison aren't trying to be bad, they are trying to do the right thing they are just utter hacks. EA is deliberately and knowingly bad.

You've got a point.

Activision does what it BELIEVES is right for the sake of the industry or themselves and ends up looking evil.

EA does what they think is funny, is self aware of their idiocy, runs with it, become massive assholes, accepts that their pricks and in the end is evil INTENTIONALLY.