The future of EA games on Steam

[CountZero]

So what's with the ELUA?

"The number of copies that you can download during a consecutive
period of days may be limited. You may not make a copy of the
Application available on a network where it could be used by multiple
users at the same time."

Ahhh if I need an Internet connection to use it, which I do, it's technically on a network...

"Application may use information
regarding your computer, hardware, media, software and your use of the
Application to validate your license rights and to update the Application."

WTF does it need to access my porn media to validate a license?

"You agree that the Application may automatically
download and install updates, upgrades and additional features that EA
deems reasonable, beneficial to you and/or reasonably necessary"

Great more bloatware, advertising and spyware...which you are paying for...

"You agree that EA may collect, use, store and transmit technical and
related information that identifies your computer (including the Internet Protocol
37683v1 Address), operating system, Application usage (including but not limited to
successful installation and/or removal), software, software usage and peripheral
hardware, that may be gathered periodically to facilitate the provision of software
updates, dynamically served content, product support and other services to you,
including online services. EA may also use this information combined with
personal information for marketing purposes and to improve our products and
services. We may also share that data with our third party service providers in a
form that does not personally identify you."

WOW!

"EA reserves the right to monitor communications on the Application and disclose
any information EA deems necessary to (i) ensure your compliance with this
License; (ii) satisfy any applicable law, regulation or legal process; (iii) protect the
rights, property and interests of EA, its employees or the public."

Isn't that what the CIA does?

"System Interaction. The following processes may be associated with the
Application: Origin.exe, EACoreServer.exe, OriginClientService.exe . The
Application requires machine resources in order to perform and may impede the
functionality of other software on your machine. The Application may slow and/or
otherwise affect the performance of your machine and other software installed
and/or running thereon. You may experience technical issues after installation of
the Application. By installing the Application, you acknowledge and agree to the
foregoing risks of use. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO AND ACKNOWLEDGE
THESE POTENTIAL ISSUES, DO NOT INSTALL THE APPLICATION."

ROFL

"This License is effective until terminated. Your rights under this
License will terminate immediately and automatically without any notice from EA
if (i) you fail to comply with any of the terms and conditions of this License; or (ii)
EA ceases to support the Application. Promptly upon termination, you must
cease all use of the Application and destroy all copies of the Application in your
possession or control. EA’s termination will not limit any of EA’s other rights or
remedies at law or in equity. Sections 2-13 of this License shall survive
termination or expiration of this License for any reason."

That's friggin awesome. So if EA goes under (not likely) or their service tanks and they decided to pull it your SOL with everything you bought from them. Nice.

"TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMISSIBLE
UNDER APPLICABLE LAW, THE APPLICATION IS PROVIDED TO YOU “AS
IS,” WITH ALL FAULTS, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, WITHOUT
PERFORMANCE ASSURANCES OR GUARANTEES OF ANY KIND, AND
YOUR USE IS AT YOUR SOLE RISK. THE ENTIRE RISK OF SATISFACTORY
QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE RESIDES WITH YOU....EA DOES NOT WARRANT AGAINST INTERFERENCE WITH YOUR ENJOYMENT OF THE APPLICATION; THAT THE APPLICATION WILL MEET YOUR REQUIREMENTS; THAT OPERATION OF THE APPLICATION
WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED OR ERROR-FREE"

While it says, "TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMISSIBLE
UNDER APPLICABLE LAW" how can it be legal to offer a product that may not work, and if it doesn't work you have no recourse to get it fixed or replaced?

Well that was a great read, but I still didn't find what I was looking for, how many times I can download my game and for how long do I have it available to me. Their last service only allowed you to download it for a year and then it was gone.

Selling consumer level software of any kind as a license and not the actual product is one of the worst things to happen to consumers in recent times. As more and more stuff becomes 'software' instead of goods the less we own.

 

[jackstar7]

Selling consumer level software of any kind as a license and not the actual product is one of the worst things to happen to consumers in recent times. As more and more stuff becomes 'software' instead of goods the less we own.

This should open up into a whole philosophical discussion about ownership.

 

[Fox5]

I was planning to get Crysis 2.
Now I'm not.

Steam is the only way I'll buy a PC game, with the rare exception of maybe indie games directly from the developers and REALLY good sales through other venues. Hope this venture of EA's crashes and burns.
Also, Steam is a relatively unobtrusive app that already exists on my PC because it's the de facto standard for PC game downloads. I HATE when games install 2 or 3 other programs just to use them, and have them auto boot with the PC, thanks EA.

There's only competitor to Steam I would accept is Windows built in App store since they're pretty much impartial. It would have to not suck, crash, and run slow like the games for windows live client, and not continually prompt for updates every time I load up a game.

 

[TechBoyJK]

http://www.gamefront.com/ea-pulls-crysis-2-from-steam-say-its-origin-only/

GameFront wrote:

UPDATE: We’ve just received a response from EA. Apparently they did NOT pull Crysis 2 from Steam. Rather, it was a result of Steam’s policies. Here’s their response:

"It’s unfortunate that Steam has removed Crysis 2 from their service. This was not an EA decision or the result of any action by EA.

Steam has imposed a set of business terms for developers hoping to sell content on that service – many of which are not imposed by other online game services. Unfortunately, Crytek has an agreement with another download service which violates the new rules from Steam and resulted in its expulsion of Crysis 2 from Steam.

Crysis 2 continues to be available on several other download services including GameStop, Amazon, Origin.com and more."

 

[skace]

Sounds like your system works better for you than mine does for me.

Yea but I bet Anubis' system is 3x the amount of work. Installing new games is about as fun as painting.

 

[skace]

Also, people who say things like "I'll buy it retail before I buy it on Origins" aren't exactly sticking it to the man. In fact, that may be exactly what EA wants you to do. Sticking it to the man is not buying their games until they go back to Steam. That is really the only message you can send.

Frankly, Steam is how I hear about new games for the most part these days. So if EA really did pull out of Steam, I won't hear about 90% of their releases. The only reason I would get BF3 now is if it is some sort of titan of overwhelming popularity that I can't go anywhere without hearing about it. But on Steam, I was basically a guaranteed pre-order.

 

[sandorski]

http://www.gamefront.com/ea-pulls-crysis-2-from-steam-say-its-origin-only/

If accurate, I wonder what the issue is?

 

[p0nd]

Yea but I bet Anubis' system is 3x the amount of work. Installing new games is about as fun as painting.

Painting is fun.

 

[Anubis]

Yea but I bet Anubis' system is 3x the amount of work. Installing new games is about as fun as painting.

i like painting

also theres nothing hard about putting in a DVD and hitting OK a few times

 

[wuliheron]

Getting the same performance on a compact, power-efficient tablet costs much more than a stationary PC or console, and that fact will never change.

Drive down the price of games....why? Because of increased demand? That would drive prices up, not down. Web distribution is not specific to tablets, PCs can do it just the same. And web distribution like Steam doesn't change the hardware requirements for games, unless you're using a service like OnLive, in which case the hardware requirements switches from your graphics hardware to the bandwidth available over your network.

You've got it backwards, mass production and distribution drives down costs and expands the market. The more demand there is the more competition to keep prices low and the more effort is put into increasing mass production and distribution. Thus in the 1970s it cost about the same to visit a movie theater as it does today, but today I can watch all the movies I want online for the same price of a single theater ticket.

As for desktops giving you more bang for your buck, that will change as well. A tablet is just a small handful for sand, plastic, and metal. Its not the materials that cost more, but the development costs. Yeah, a desktop can provide the latest cutting edge technology, but most people are not willing to spend that kind of money. They want a trade off between cost and convenience and tablets will eventually win that war because desktops are simply not convenient. Already the cost of manufacturing tablets is going down as the size of desktop also gets smaller and the two will meet somewhere in the middle.

 

[Schadenfreude]

Well outside of EA being a big bad bully (which I have no opinions about - I knew that there was a bit of a hubbub about that a few years back but I thought they straightened it out?); it seems fairly straightforward:

- New company "X" (in this instance Valve) invents new market
- New market grows, "X" is a huge, near monopoly-level, player
- Companies "Y" and "Z" want in on the action, bringing in competition

Outside of being Valve being a company/service with company ethics I don't see anything new. Yes it's a shame that I won't be playing Crysis 2, but then again I've got other FPS' to play so it's not that big a deal.

Going a bit off-topic here, but as I see it this is the inevitable outcome as videogame "purchases" become mere "service agreements" as a whole. 5~10 years from now I wouldn't be surprised if all games we just streamed netflix/on-live style, all the while retaining the $50 entrance fee of course, with possibly a monthly "service charge" (or nickle and dime'ing us to death w/ more DLC - hell, I wouldn't be surprised to see "patches" being re-labeled as "features" and being charged for them too, ugh)

 

[lupi]

http://www.gamefront.com/ea-pulls-crysis-2-from-steam-say-its-origin-only/

that's meaningless without specifics.

 

[wuliheron]

Going a bit off-topic here, but as I see it this is the inevitable outcome as videogame "purchases" become mere "service agreements" as a whole. 5~10 years from now I wouldn't be surprised if all games we just streamed netflix/on-live style, all the while retaining the $50 entrance fee of course, with possibly a monthly "service charge" (or nickle and dime'ing us to death w/ more DLC - hell, I wouldn't be surprised to see "patches" being re-labeled as "features" and being charged for them too, ugh)

There is already a new service available that allows people to play games like Crysis 2 for free providing they first watch commercials, and services already exist exactly like you describe where you simply pay a flat monthly fee to play any games you want. In the future I can imagine people will choose their ISP just as the might currently choose cable TV or satellite based on some sort of package deal that includes access to countless games. No doubt the internet and other services will be open and available to them, but the package deal will simply be bundled with their ISP and cheaper.

 

[Red Hawk]

You've got it backwards, mass production and distribution drives down costs and expands the market. The more demand there is the more competition to keep prices low and the more effort is put into increasing mass production and distribution. Thus in the 1970s it cost about the same to visit a movie theater as it does today, but today I can watch all the movies I want online for the same price of a single theater ticket.

Perhaps it will drive down prices. It hasn't yet. But what do tablets have to do with that? PCs have the same access to download services.

As for desktops giving you more bang for your buck, that will change as well. A tablet is just a small handful for sand, plastic, and metal. Its not the materials that cost more, but the development costs. Yeah, a desktop can provide the latest cutting edge technology, but most people are not willing to spend that kind of money. They want a trade off between cost and convenience and tablets will eventually win that war because desktops are simply not convenient. Already the cost of manufacturing tablets is going down as the size of desktop also gets smaller and the two will meet somewhere in the middle.

The materials are more expensive. It costs more to implement a cooling system in a small gaming system than it does in a large one, and to make chips that consume less power. And development costs would still be passed on to the consumer, or said development just wouldn't be profitable. Mobile gaming is nothing new. It's as old as the Gameboy. But even as gaming has been offered through the Gameboy, Gameboy Advance, PSP, Nintendo DS, there has always been the demand for cutting-edge games, and people have been willing to pay more for that edge. Why would tablets change any of that?

 

[Schadenfreude]

There is already a new service available that allows people to play games like Crysis 2 for free providing they first watch commercials, and services already exist exactly like you describe where you simply pay a flat monthly fee to play any games you want. In the future I can imagine people will choose their ISP just as the might currently choose cable TV or satellite based on some sort of package deal that includes access to countless games. No doubt the internet and other services will be open and available to them, but the package deal will simply be bundled with their ISP and cheaper.

I highly doubt that. While I'm for businesses being profitable, I'd see game companies like Activision and EA - who has to answer to investors concerned about their bottom dollar - trying to shoehorn "AAA" games into an MMO model per game, where you'd pay $50 up-front, followed by monthly subscription fees.

It's happening now; "DLC" that you have to pay for on a day 1 release, that's already downloaded into/in the install of the game but you pay to unlock? CoD trying to roll out that subscription fee on their next release? I'd even say Xbox live charging money is a concern - the PC people would say "that's because it's for consoles" or some other excuse, but from a maximizing profit standpoint, what's to stop some asshole exec to say, "Hey, gamers (the general population doesn't distinguish between PC and console) are forking cash over to have the option to play online, why can't it work on our system/network?" (Nevermind that the whole hubbub about net neutrality touched on that already).

Again, I'm not knocking on corporations trying to be profitable; their employees have to eat and sleep somewhere, I get that. But when they try to change the (excuse the lingo) paradigm of how product is distributed (from "product" to "service") just to reap the profits I would say that's pretty low.

It's a dark day in PC gaming, IMO.

 

[RobertPters77]

ea is the worst thing to ever happen to pc gaming.

Let me guess, you think that Valve is so awesome and so infallible that any Competitor to Steam offends you personally, and automatically the company behind it is the greatest evil on the face of the earth?

Now you're thinking like a mac user.

EDIT: Why didn't anyone bitch about Valve and forcing steam down everyone's throat during the HL2 launch?

Double standards much?

 

[Schadenfreude]

Let me guess, you think that Valve is so awesome and so infallible that any Competitor to Steam offends you personally, and automatically the company behind it is the greatest evil on the face of the earth?

Now you're thinking like a mac user.

EDIT: Why didn't anyone bitch about Valve and forcing steam down everyone's throat during the HL2 launch?

Double standards much?

Are you insane? Almost everyone whined and bitched about Valve rolling out Steam when HL2 Launched; I agree people are over-reacting to this (so Crysis 2 won't be profitable for EA and they'll lose huge amounts of $$ in the process, big whoop) but EA has had a history where the bottom dollar comes first and foremost at the expense of both its employees and consumers.

Like I said in my past post, a lot of it may be the general trends of gaming and EA may be an easy target, but looking at its track record I can't say I'm surprised that people are saying EA is evil and blaming them for this.

 

[scooterlibby]

How about releasing that DX11 patch!

Agh yes! Where the heck is that? I'll get the game whenever (never) this patch comes out.

More on topic, I am definitely going retail for BF3. I work in economics and kind of take the rational choice view that corporations, for the most part are neither moral or immoral, just profit maximizing institutions.

That said, my customer service experience with them has been atrocious. Chalk that up to structural inefficiency or 'they're evil' or whatever you want. Quite unpleasant company to deal with, but I cannot resist BF3, period.

 

[lupi]

EDIT: Why didn't anyone bitch about Valve and forcing steam down everyone's throat during the HL2 launch?

pure lulz here

 

[Red Hawk]

The only upcoming EA game that I plan on buying is Mass Effect 3. I'll probably get the physical copy, but I would anyways even if EA doesn't make it Origin-exclusive. I want the physical collector's edition. Once I have it, I can register it through Origin and download the game to play without the disc in the system (which I can't do with EA games through Steam).

 

[RobertPters77]

@Schadenfreude

I was pointing out the hypocrisy of some people.

Yes, EA = Evil Assholes. But that does not mean people should jump on the bandwagon of hate and start shit talking about it's products or services because they are bound to compete with an already established product or franchise.

Like the CoD kids shit talk about BF3, and the Mac users talk shit about PCs.

 

[Anubis]

Let me guess, you think that Valve is so awesome and so infallible that any Competitor to Steam offends you personally, and automatically the company behind it is the greatest evil on the face of the earth?

Now you're thinking like a mac user.

EDIT: Why didn't anyone bitch about Valve and forcing steam down everyone's throat during the HL2 launch?

Double standards much?

umm people raised holy hell about steam not sure how you missed the shit show about having to be connected to the internet to install it from the CD and to play single player

 

[Spike]

Well, this sorta explains why you still can't preorder BF3 from steam. Guess I'm going with a retail copy... as soon as gogamers site comes back up that is.

 

[Nebor]

i like painting

also theres nothing hard about putting in a DVD and hitting OK a few times

Not all of us are uber l33t computer hackers.

 

[wuliheron]

Perhaps it will drive down prices. It hasn't yet. But what do tablets have to do with that? PCs have the same access to download services.

The more people game on PCs the more PC games developers can sell. Games are like music or movies in that they tend to make the bulk of their money in the first few months of release. The more people that have the ability to play games on a tablet or PC the better. If you can sell a billion copies at a dollar a piece, make more money then selling 100 million at a higher price, and drive the competition under its a no-brainer.

The materials are more expensive. It costs more to implement a cooling system in a small gaming system than it does in a large one, and to make chips that consume less power. And development costs would still be passed on to the consumer, or said development just wouldn't be profitable. Mobile gaming is nothing new. It's as old as the Gameboy. But even as gaming has been offered through the Gameboy, Gameboy Advance, PSP, Nintendo DS, there has always been the demand for cutting-edge games, and people have been willing to pay more for that edge. Why would tablets change any of that?

Proprietary system like consoles and handhelds exist solely because the technology is immature and they are affordable. Not because the public has an insatiable appetite for games or the latest technology. People can afford a lot of things like digital audio tapes, but the overwhelming majority settle for the significantly inferior mp3 players because they are dirt cheap, portable, hold an incredible library, and mp3 is sound is good enough for the average Joe just like cheap beer.

I'm already hearing hard core PC gamers complain there are no new games coming out that can touch their rigs and the games that are coming out are heavily consolized and just plain crap. They blame consoles, but the trend is really towards cheap generic everything. Consoles are merely another step along the road towards standardization and will eventually go the way of the Betamax and other proprietary systems that just couldn't compete in the long run.