EA thinks Steam sales are a bad thing and devalue games

EA devalues games by making shitty, unfinished games that are crippled by DRM.
 
piscian18 said:
Final Fantasy 3 on SNES when I was 12 that was worth $60.


(I had no concept of what $60 was when I was 12)
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Considering how many years later it's still one of the best JRPGs ever made I'd say it it was well worth $60.
 
Never bought a full priced EA game since Dragon Age Origins, because they shafted everyone that bought DLC, and the Awakenings expansion, with the Ultimate Edition.

Now I wait for the title to hit the sales, ME3 collector edition just went for 39.99, I got ME2 Collectors edition through Amazon for $9, I'm sorry EA but when your taking money from us after the initial purchase of the game I will do my upmost to pay as little as I possibly can.
 
Deraj_53 said:
This video so matches the sentiment here.

EA in a Nutshell:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-LE0ycgkBQ
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Funny, but I found the description better than the video:
-This is for buying out some of the best game companies and turning them to mediocrity.
-This is for having some of the worst customer service in the gaming industry.
-This is for deliberately holding back game content for the sole purpose of making customers pay more for it later as DLC.
-This is for strictly enforcing copyrights on content that you did not even create.
-This is for taking the Need for Speed franchise and completely ruining it.
-This is for supporting the S.O.P.A.
-This is for overworking your employees with no benefeits, demolishing any creative talent they have.
-This is for making terms of use that allow you to backstab your customers any time you see fit.
-This is for releasing the same things every year, an increasingly large number being the only difference.
-This is for forcing your customers to stay online to even play several games you publish at all.
-This is for backstabbing Valve, preventing the developers you publish for from releasing their games via Steam for the sole purpose of promoting your own platform.
-This is for overhyping your games and not delivering the content you promised.
-This is for bribing media review organizations to increase the rep of your games.
-This is for monopolizing the entire gaming industry and crushing all that oppose you
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Kinda sounds more like Activision, really.... but hey, their marketing pawn hasn't said anything this stupid....... yet.
 
What Devalues games is making a crappy game with 6-8hrs of gameplay and selling it for $60 plus having to buy DLC packs just to complete the damn story of the game or Map Packs.
 
LeviathanZERO said:
Funny, but I found the description better than the video:


Kinda sounds more like Activision, really.... but hey, their marketing pawn hasn't said anything this stupid....... yet.
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On NFS: Black Box ruined it. They proved with the Run that they don't understand what makes the series fun anymore and lack the talent to do it. After Most Wanted they simply lost it. EA saved NFS by giving it to Criterion.
 
EA would prefer we tithe a tenth of our yearly income to them aka the Church.
 
Derangel said:
EA saved NFS by giving it to Criterion.
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Yeah, I'm waiting to see what will come from this, but its already guaranteed to have EATRAX and some washout DJ Atomica doing annoying voice overs and cut scenes you cant skip. I liked Burnout Paradise to an extent, but then it just annoyed me to the point I cant stand it anymore. That game ruined Guns and Roses. I fucking hate Paradise City now. I have to mute the game until I get in a car so I dont hear that trash.

Wait a minute, what were we talking about again?
lol. I think my body rejects anything from EA..... I am optimistic though, I want to get a hands on first before making conclusions. New Hot Pursuit was decent, I stopped playing once I finished all the races, didnt like the police mode, but overall it was a good game.
 
piscian18 said:
Final Fantasy 3 on SNES when I was 12 that was worth $60.


(I had no concept of what $60 was when I was 12)
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I don't base the value of a game on a personal opinion. Cause that varies from person to person. Someone might think one game is worth 100$ while another is worth 1$.

As for ff3. Yes great game :)
 
EA is the Walmart of gaming companies. What are they complaining about? They abuse their programmers in sweatshop like conditions, they make crap, they sell crap, most people wouldn't buy their crap unless it was discounted significantly, and they support their games like the crap they are. If they didn't have discounted sales, there are a great many people that wouldn't be buying their stuff at all. Do they like ripping their customers off by overcharging them?
 
dgingeri said:
EA is the Walmart of gaming companies. What are they complaining about? They abuse their programmers in sweatshop like conditions, they make crap, they sell crap, most people wouldn't buy their crap unless it was discounted significantly, and they support their games like the crap they are. If they didn't have discounted sales, there are a great many people that wouldn't be buying their stuff at all. Do they like ripping their customers off by overcharging them?
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Think you mean Activision.
 
MavericK96 said:
But the thing is, is it really "devaluing" the game if the majority of people who bought it at 75% off wouldn't have bought it in the first place if it were more?

If by "devaluing" you mean "the market setting the value of the game by not purchasing it until the inane release price is dropped", then okay. I don't think that's what he meant, though.

I think that's the counter-argument here and it seems to be a good one.
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I think his argument is that if you are willing to sell a game for $30, then in the public's mind the game is only worth $30, which ultimately discourages people from buying full price games later on (and makes people bitch about paying full price at all). How many times has a game come out and you hear people say "I'll wait and pick it up at a Steam sale"? All the time, because people know that eventually it'll go on sale. If you don't ever put your games on sale, then people won't bother waiting for a sale, and instead will buy it full price. Whether that gains or loses you more sales is a question for the market, but the logic is sound if you value your intellectual property that highly.

You don't see high-end retailers (like Gucci, or Tiffany) having 30% off Colombus Day sales, for instance. Now comparing EA to a high end retailer is kind of dumb, but that's where the guy is coming from.
 
Sounds like EA wants to be more like Nintendo anymore. Nintendo 1st party games almost never go down. Look at games like Donkey Kong, Super Mario Galaxy 2 in any retail store. It's still right up there at $50, the same f'n price when it came out over a year ago! Too bad EA games are a waste of space they are put on. I'm soo disgusted with NFS games anymore being broken and never fixed and just being steamy turds.

So many people say they won't buy a game at $60. If this was true then the sales would show it, atleast till they kill 2nd hand sales where people are trading those games in just days after buying it then beating it. At that time I think game studios are gonna be in a world of hurt.

Its a cut throat market these days EA, deal with it! Stop crying about.
 
vQ: One of the things that Steam does is this random deep-discounting of software, and it works well for them. Do you see that as something you want to do?

David DeMartini: We won't be doing that. ...
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No shit. That's the whole point to Origin. To get away from Steam's practices including deeply discounted games.

Its the sign of business leadership fixated on getting every last dime out of an individual rather than look at the whole sales picture.
 
Forceman said:
If you don't ever put your games on sale, then people won't bother waiting for a sale, and instead will buy it full price.
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youre right except for this part. it should be "some people will buy it full price, and many more will just not buy it."
 
There wouldn't be a steam if they would let you play a game you purchased without an online connection. You buy the dvd, pop it in your pc, & you still can't play something you dropped $60 on, because of drms & all their bullshit whining about pirates stealing their games. I swear I gonna kick johnny depps ass ;). So now they have steam to protect their artistic rights & they're bitching about that. Some people are never gonna be happy :D
 
There is one problem when it comes to digital distribution that can not relate to the real world. Buying second hand. A digital game can not devalue after you play it 200-300 times, which is probably a concept Origin is chasing. They want to keep the prices at roughly the same level as the RRP. However, age is a factor that can reduce the value of a game. On the other hand if the severs are populated and there is demand for the game to be played, even if it's 10 years old, they can still charge close to what the RRP was.
The only way to buy something second hand is as if you contact a guy that stopped playing the game and wants to get rid of it. Then you can say pick it up for 20$ instead of 60$ but without possiblility to move from one Steam/Origin account to another, this idea is out of the window.
 
temujin987 said:
well, I wonder how many people bought something cheap and then bought the entire series of a franchise. or loads of dlc. in any case, people check steam frequently to see if there is something interesting on sale. that way many people buy many more games than they could ever play just because they are cheap right now and they will "play them later".

i'm pretty sure that generates much more revenue in total. the thing with entertainment is that there has been produced much more than anyone could consume in their entire life so the value of new content is diminished. of course the production value of today's games and movies is higher than just a few years ago, but still. literature and music has been made for centuries, movies for decades, games too. even if you just count the games that are being released at present, there are too many to play. in a nutshell, imo, it's good old supply and demand. there's so much competition that it drives prices down. that's really not something fueled by steam.
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This. I bought X3:TC on sale. As an FPS guy, I would have never touched a space sim, even at $20 five years later. It hits $5, I pick it up and it is now in my top 3 most played on Steam. I've already gone back and bought X,X2, X3:Reunion and just recently Albion Prelude (all at full price). Eagerly awaiting X:Rebirth and it will be a day 1 full price purchase for me.

Quality games give value, shitting on your IPs and customers takes it away.
 
Of course EA will say this. Any other company would too if its trying to compete(Origin) in the same type of business. But to me, Steam has been very good so far. It is definitely nice to have things all in a menu and be able to play a game without being complicated. Now EA wanting $79.99 for some preorders that I have seen.........you better think again.
 
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Forceman said:
I think his argument is that if you are willing to sell a game for $30, then in the public's mind the game is only worth $30, which ultimately discourages people from buying full price games later on (and makes people bitch about paying full price at all). How many times has a game come out and you hear people say "I'll wait and pick it up at a Steam sale"? All the time, because people know that eventually it'll go on sale. If you don't ever put your games on sale, then people won't bother waiting for a sale, and instead will buy it full price. Whether that gains or loses you more sales is a question for the market, but the logic is sound if you value your intellectual property that highly.

You don't see high-end retailers (like Gucci, or Tiffany) having 30% off Colombus Day sales, for instance. Now comparing EA to a high end retailer is kind of dumb, but that's where the guy is coming from.
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Yeah I understand where he is coming from, but he's still wrong IMO. :cool:

I don't think "deep discount" sales discourage people from buying at full price later so much as they make people buy games they wouldn't have normally.

I can see maybe if there were 50% off sales on a game that just came out a month ago, but that rarely, if ever, happens. Most of the 75%+ off sales are for older or indie titles.

But yes, his whole argument is fundamentally flawed because he thinks of EA as some sort of premium retailer, which is a fallacy in any of itself.
 
I wonder how they feel about the pay-what-you-want Humble Bundles, they must be worse than Steam!
 
ekuest said:
youre right except for this part. it should be "some people will buy it full price, and many more will just not buy it."
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It's hard to know for sure how that breaks for the company because the fact that there are sales for older titles in some way creates the behavior you are trying to measure. I agree that, for now, you are right, but if there really was no option for buying it at a discounted price it is hard to know what impact that would have.

The economics of software also works against his argument - since the marginal cost of a new copy is zero, selling a copy for $5 versus not selling one at all still makes sense - but for physical products like he is comparing to it might not. A 50% off software sale is going to make you money, while a 50% off car sale probably wouldn't.

MavericK96 said:
Yeah I understand where he is coming from, but he's still wrong IMO. :cool:

But yes, his whole argument is fundamentally flawed because he thinks of EA as some sort of premium retailer, which is a fallacy in any of itself.
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Yep to both of those points.
 
EA is a behemoth company more converned about making money for their investors than actually putting out good games. When the execs can't tell their investors they made them more money this quarter than in the past quarter, something must be wrong. It can't be their fault for putting out shitty games so it must be the fault of one of their competitors.
 
This past christmas sale on Steam was a literal free for all. The summer camp sale is starting in a couple of weeks, and surely aims to out perform the previous sale. All the while, EA and GoG accuse Valve/Steam/Gaben of devaluing games and brainwashing the consumer.
 
Bomo said:
As an FPS guy, I would have never touched a space sim, even at $20 five years later. It hits $5, I pick it up and it is now in my top 3 most played on Steam.
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Hell, I've bought a good number of Steam edition copies of games I already own on hard copy for convenience reasons. But for the fact that they only cost a few bucks on sale, I would have no reason to buy them again (certainly not at full price). Just today, I see all of the Far Cry games on sale on Steam for $5, and I'm seriously considering buying them again to not have to juggle a half dozen discs along with manual patching. I own all of them already and wouldn't have given them a passing glance if it wasn't for the 75% discount.

How many people have bought games on Steam that they owned years ago, or pirated and finished, just because it was so damn cheap.

All of these are examples of situations where people wouldn't have bought a particular game at full price anyway. Free money to be had.
 
temujin987 said:
well, I wonder how many people bought something cheap and then bought the entire series of a franchise. or loads of dlc. in any case, people check steam frequently to see if there is something interesting on sale. that way many people buy many more games than they could ever play just because they are cheap right now and they will "play them later".
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Here is a (purely anectdotal, so don't think I am trying to insinuate this is how it happens for everyone) case of that happening.

I didn't even have a steam account till late last year. When I heard valve was giving away Portal for free, I got is for a laugh.

I now have everything valve has ever realeased, as well as 100's of other games I would never have bought.
 
You don't need steam sales to think EA games are worth less than 60$.
You just have to buy EA games and play em to know that.
 
Here, let me translate what he's really saying.

Q: One of the things that Steam does is this random deep-discounting of software, and it works well for them. Do you see that as something you want to do?

David DeMartini: We won't be doing that. Obviously they think it's the right thing to do after a certain amount of time. I just think it educate's consumers and that's dangerous. I know both sides of it, even though I have a freakish amount of money and shop at Nordstrom. If you want to sell a whole bunch of units, that is certainly a way to do that, to sell a whole bunch of stuff at a low price. The gamemakers work incredibly hard to make this intellectual property, and we're trying to milk it. We're trying to be Nordstrom. When I say that, I mean I can afford to shop there, and occasionally there will be things that are on sale you could look for a discount, cause we know you really can't afford stuff with this economy.

Q: I do think the downside of what Steam does might be damage to the brand.

David DeMartini: Also what Steam does might be teaching the customer that "I might not want it in the first month, but if I look at it in four or five months, even though consumers were already doing this and buying used games too." It's an approach, and I'm not going to say it's not working for Valve. It certainly works for Valve; I don't know if it works as well for the publishing partners who take on the majority of that haircut. You know the people who want all the money but do none of the work.
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the sales are literally a win / win. valve's experiences are that they sell so many copies that they make MORE money than they were, and it gets into the hands of more people.

both parties profit, nobody suffers. like seriously.
 
I buy alot of cheap games on steam. They can either not get no money out of me or they can get $10 when the game is now an afterthought.

Some games I'll pay $50-$60 when they come out. Like WoW, Halo, Mass Effect, Assassin's Creed.

Then theres games that I'm not big fan of and I'll wait til they drop in price before I get them. If games were cheaper from the get go I'd probably those games sooner without them being on sale.
 
I don't think I can say anything that has not already been said by a number of other people in this thread.

Suffice to say, it is rare fubar PR gems like this that provide a true glimpse into the mind set of executives who work for mega publishers like EA. If they had their way, everyone would be paying full RRP of $200, along with a weekly subscription fee, daily $DLC, content would be streamed and users would be required to maintain a constant online connection, and games would NEVER EVER go on sale.
 
hfk said:
I really don't think EA should talk about devaluing games...
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It would of been funny to see them ask EA "Since you dont like to devalue games, how do you explain the Dragon Age 2, Mass Effect 3, and from the looks of it Dead Space 3?"
 
I thought the comment was very ironic. We are trying to be nordstroms, which means you make the same low quality shit in outsourced factories and just sell it for a lot more right?

I mean no offense but valve has a hella higher quality brand image than EA so apparently they are way off on that one.

Steam just showed us how DRM can work, unlike EA, and TBH they made a couple hundred dollars in sales off of me that no one would have ever made at higher prices. Shoot I bought a ton of games that I have never played, and I am not sure I ever will.
 
Both EA and Activision are masters of milking their games for as long as possible, even the ones that aren't necessarily huge. So really this is nothing new for EA.
 
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