News - EA will build microtransactions into all its games

[cheesemp]

The thing that frustrates me about EA's policy is that they have no long-term plan with DLC.

I bought Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age for very low prices on Steam, maybe £3-5 each or something, a very long time after they were released. I find out that there's some DLC, and log on to the shop and it says £20 for all of the DLC.

So they expect me to pay 4 times the retail price of the game for the DLC? No, actually I'll pass.

I'm sure some people will claim that I'm exactly the type of person driving this sort of activity, because I've bought the game for just £3 or whatever, and they need to recoup their costs. Fair enough. But the DLC needs to come down in price as well. If they'd wanted £1 per pack, I'd probably have done it. When it's released, fair enough, but 3, 4 years down the line, you cannot charge several times what the game costs for DLC. Well, you can, but I won't buy it.

Look at Bethesda for instance. They release Fallout 3, and then a bunch of DLC. If you want, you can buy each one individually. But now it's available as a GotY edition, with everything bundled together. Yep, I'll buy that. As for Mass Effect's DLC (ME2 is one of my favourite games of all time), well EA - I would absolutely jump at that, I would love to play it. And so far, you've extracted precisely £0 from me. Good work.

This. I've skipped the ME2 DLC for this very reason. An extra level or two in a game shouldn't cost a third of game RRP in the first place but to leave it like that = No sale.

[ForsakenNGL]

I'm pretty close to uninstalling The Simpsons Tapped Out from my Nexus because of the 'pay for stuff to progress' mentality. Guess who the software house is? EA...

£35 for 900 donuts. I can see that £70 was easy to spend...

Yep, "pay to progress" is quite annoying in mobiles, in those cases I look for [deleted]

Mod edit: please don't post piracy advice on the forums

[kalniel]

*shrugs* Anyone with any sense will continue to assess the game they get out of the box/the other side of the link and judge the value accordingly - EA will be relying on it in fact. I don't think there's going to be a sudden down-turn in consumer intelligence so I don't think there's any cause for alarm.

[crossy]

Sorry - this post turned into a bit of a rant - but i'm going to post this anyway as I suspect the vast majority of people will agree with me. It's not meant to be inflammatory
...
EA's justification that "gamers clearly love FTP/micro transactions" is complete rubbish and totally baseless - of course they will be seeing immense profits/sales from this channel - gamers are not given the choice!

If you gave gamers two choices:

1) Pay £40 for a game with all content included
2) Pay nothing for the base game but pay £80 for all the content over a year

I would wager that the vast majority of players will plump for option 1.

EA have long been the target of abuse from the gaming community and unfortunately for them, it's consistently for the right reasons. Gone are the days of EA being one of the premier gaming companies - in recent years they have spent their money buying up a whole bunch of good (and struggling) studios and completely destroying their franchises. DICE, Westwood (oh how I miss their games..), Bullfrog (we *need* DK III ), Maxis, Pandemic...the list goes on.

*grumble* maybe I am just getting old now and I am out of touch with reality!

No sir, you are neither ranting nor out of touch with reality. Quite the converse I would suggest.

Who are saying that FTP+uTransactions are the popular way? Answer - the games houses. I have seen NO independent studies saying this to be the case, and the games houses have great incentive to use MiniTrue methods to get this out there.

Remember also that the idea of pay-to-play has been seriously mooted - namely if you want to play BF4/COD:BO3 etc then you have to put money in a "play meter". Not only for online play (which is perhaps justifiable since MP needs servers and other infrastructure which costs money to run) but also for single/offline play - which is just pure profit.

I myself have come across tablet games that are paid for, have adverts AND uPayments - that's not justifiable under any terms, other than pure unadulterated greed.

At the end of the day though, WE the buying public have a choice - if we don't approve of such invidious practices then we need to vote with our wallets/chequebooks and stop buying these products. Otherwise, we stop being consumers and become addicts - dependant on the capricious whims of our dealer of choice, whether that be EA, Activision, Ubisoft, or whomever.

Like most, I'm content with the idea of uPayments for optional items, or to spend money to skip the time needed to level up (the latter within reason of course). However, when you have to uPay for stuff needed to go through a paid-for game, I start to be suspicious and dismayed. So, taking BF4 as example, uPay for uniforms or tweaked weapons (say an AK with a grenade launcher) or map packs is fine. On the other hand if you get your copy of BF4 copy with only a pistol and have to uPay everything else, then they're NOT going to get a pre-order from me.

Grumpy old geezer ... and proud of it!

[Smudger]

Yep, "pay to progress" is quite annoying in mobiles, in those cases I look for the Mod version with free shopping (Get that one for Simpsons btw).

Do what now?

[Spud1]

and the games houses have great incentive to use MiniTrue methods to get this out there.

doubleplusgood 1984 reference

[Runner1409]

Does that mean we will spend 10 Euros per game and we will have to buy the rest of the things (items/weapons/etc)? I'd like that... But something tells me that the prices will not change..

[addz17]

I hate the way EA operates, shoe horning their money grabbing ways onto gamers. Origin was forced upon us now this:
"pay for things along the way, either to get to a higher level, to buy a new character, to buy a truck, a gun "

So now instead of the satisfaction of earning something in the game i simply fork out money instead?
To buy Dead Space 3 in its entirety outright on origin is nearly £65.... nah i'll just buy Tombraider off steam for £27 instead, probably a better game anyway.

[kalniel]

I hate the way EA operates, shoe horning their money grabbing ways onto gamers. Origin was forced upon us now this:
"pay for things along the way, either to get to a higher level, to buy a new character, to buy a truck, a gun "

So now instead of the satisfaction of earning something in the game i simply fork out money instead?
To buy Dead Space 3 in its entirety outright on origin is nearly £65.... nah i'll just buy Tombraider off steam for £27 instead, probably a better game anyway.

Do you like Valve? I guess so seeing as you want to buy TR from Steam. Ironic that EA seem to be just following Valve in these measures - requirement to use origin/steam, microtransactions/steam hat store..

[iranu]

Imagine applying this philosophy to other things in life.

New blockbuster film out on DVD - buy it now, only £9.99. Ok I'll buy that, looks good. Get home, pop it in the DVD player. Watch an hour when all of a sudden the movie stops and a message comes up. If you want to find out what happens pay £30.

It's a rip off and a way to screw as much money from the gamer as possible.

Secondly I play games for entertainment and a challenge. What's the point if the only way to complete the game is through paying more money?

[AGTDenton]

Those that want to pay for a scarf for their character should be able to buy a lite or get a free version of the game, so that they can customise it their way. Those that dont want all that rubbish should be able to buy a full version of the game that does not disadvantage them from other players.
Some DLC is ok, such as BF3 Premium but I saw that as an Addon like Special Forces or Euro Force for BF2. On release was really expensive but its fallen a lot now, and you do get quite a lot more game.
If I had to put real money in to buying a new gun or kit or similar I would turn away much like I did with Battlefield F2P and Heros.

[Terbinator]

Snip...

I can appreciate where you're coming from but its the implementation that makes "it work" - F2P games are no more the cancer, bane or anything else as much as a bad game/franchise in general is. You say yourself it has to be perfect for it to work, but TF2 and LoL are getting it right and its showing, the latter of which easily dukes it as 'the worlds most popular game'.

Admittedly, i only played TF2 post-F2P, but i've never felt out-gunned or out-spent on it; likewise for LoL.

[Noxvayl]

If consumers don't begin to make informed choices about what they buy, whether that pertains to games or anything else, then disasters like Aliens: Colonial Marines and free to play games with ridiculous in-game transactions will become more common. TotalBiscuit goes into more detail with his rant about pre-ordering games which I agree with. We need to stop thinking of publishers as acting without reason, the choices they make are based on the data they collect and if we are positively reinforcing bad content being produced by not being careful enough with the money we spend then we are partially to blame. We don't have control over what developers or publishers decide but we do have control over the money we spend and we need to start using the control we do have to reward or punish developers based on how they meet our needs. Clearly free to play is a contentious issue and if publishers and/or developers get it wrong stop yourself from giving them any money, it is the only way we can let them know they are not doing a good enough job.

[kalniel]

Imagine applying this philosophy to other things in life.

New blockbuster film out on DVD - buy it now, only £9.99. Ok I'll buy that, looks good. Get home, pop it in the DVD player. Watch an hour when all of a sudden the movie stops and a message comes up. If you want to find out what happens pay £30.

It's a rip off and a way to screw as much money from the gamer as possible.

Secondly I play games for entertainment and a challenge. What's the point if the only way to complete the game is through paying more money?

That's only a problem if they mis-sell you the game in the first place. Which we are fully protected against with our trade acts. If they advertise a film then they have to provide the film. Conversely if you buy the first series you don't have a right to all the subsequent series' for free.

[Spud1]

I can appreciate where you're coming from but its the implementation that makes "it work" - F2P games are no more the cancer, bane or anything else as much as a bad game/franchise in general is. You say yourself it has to be perfect for it to work, but TF2 and LoL are getting it right and its showing, the latter of which easily dukes it as 'the worlds most popular game'.

Admittedly, i only played TF2 post-F2P, but i've never felt out-gunned or out-spent on it; likewise for LoL.

Fair enough - but even when they get it right (and I don't really agree that TF2 does get it right, but lets not debate that ), odds are it will still cost you more money than if it were based on a more traditional model. I get the point that F2P allows more games to be made/published, and keeps some games alive (TOR, Star Trek online etc) but I still feel it degrades the whole experience.

There is also a huge difference between getting it right and being commercially successful Players will often overlook the problems caused by F2P if the overall game experience is still good enough..as is shown by LoL and TF2.

EA really smacked us hard in the face recently when they announced that C&C Generals 2 was going to be converted into a F2P game - now you may say that the fact I am a bit gutted about this is my own fault for anticipating another C&C Generals game and looking forward to it - but I think it's still a valid point..even if that does kinda co-incide with the "why you shouldn't pre order games" discussion

There are more important things in life to get worked up about, but it's still incredibly frustrating!

[iamlorro]

Pretty obvious move to me - in-app purchases are a great way to bump the price sky high without folks noticing. E.g. that news article on the BBC this morning where some little lad managed to spend £1700 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-21620814). What got me in the interview with his mum was that she seemed to be saying that a single DLC pack was nearly £70.

I've got caught myself where a "free" game turns out to be feature limited unless you spend on it. I don't mind so much the optional stuff like in Dead Trigger where you can buy in game money rather than earn it, what does get my hackles raised is where you need to spend that money to actually play the game to an extent more than a demo.

Couldnt agree more with these points.