EA shutting down four free online games !

[MrNeil]

http://www.ea.com/news/update-on-a-f...-play-pc-games

The one for and my boys is Battlefield Heroes
We had many laughs with this game and now many more till the end now ....

[SUMMONER]

Sad to see Battlefield P4F go. Soooooo... many happy hours of mowing down enemies in the heli on the Oman map.

[shaithis]

I can finally delete FIFA World and NFS World.......only started them once each but couldn't bring myself to delete them in case they patched them to make them decent.........

Odd thing is that FIFA World was still getting updates simultaneously with FIFA15

I guess they want to concentrate more on dungeon keeper style games

[Saracen]

Well, I guess they're a business, and face the realities of cost and benefit. If they aren't getting the 'benefit' they require from free games, whatever they define that as being, then continued "development and support" isn't sustainable.

The risk of support (and/or validation servers) being pulled from paid-for games is one reason why I have not and will not buy any games that require such servers or validation on either installation or game-start.

I guess most gamers buy a new game, binge on it, and move on the next next fix of a new game. I tend to revisit old favourites regularly, which is one reason I still have working games (and hardware) I bought in the 1970s. Currently, I'm having another run-through on Thief.

Still, I guess we can't moan too much when 'free' games are pulled. Just make the most of them first.

[shaithis]

Well, I guess they're a business, and face the realities of cost and benefit. If they aren't getting the 'benefit' they require from free games, whatever they define that as being, then continued "development and support" isn't sustainable.

I think they were early F2P titles that they threw out without thinking enough about the model.

Now that others have found great ways to slyly part customers with money under the guise of "free", EA will go back to the drawing board and copy their style.

One of the most successful "free" games at the moment seems to be Hearthstone. I have a friend I see playing it regularly and recently asked him how much he had spent on it........he said "Not much, I spend a quid every now and again". Then asked him to open his account page and look at the transactions: Almost 150ukp!

He was a lot more shocked then I was.

Keeping transactions so small is a very clever ploy, people think they are spending very little and the psychology behind it is total genius.....albeit (IMO) underhanded.

As much as I love smartphones I do hate how they have created this new gaming model.

[Saracen]

Ain't marketing wonderful

I have, as you probably have noticed, much the same attitude to in-game payments as I do to subscription software, and for very similar reasons.

I like to know what things are going to cost me, if at all possible, before I commit myself. If I buy a game outright, it's cost me £x whether I play it for an hour and then never again, or 10 hours a week, for 6 months, and then do it all over 5 years later. And then another 5 years later. With validation and activation online, there's no certainty I can do that.

Similarly, with software, if I buy a package (or upgrade) I know, right now, that I will get those features and capabilities, pretty much indefinitely, for a specified £x. Examples would be Photoshop and MS Office. One of my machines still has Win97 and Office 97 on it. And it's still in use. Yeah, later versions are 'better', have more facilities etc, but that 16 year old combination still does what I needed of it when brand new, and need of it now. I upgraded Photoshop periodically too, but by no stretch of the inagination to every new version. And, before committing ANY funds to upgrading, I decide if it's needed at all, or justified by new or improved features. With a subscription model, I have an unknown and unquantifiable commitment to keep paying out.

Which is why I won't do it. Like your friend and his game, I know I risk facing a "HOW BLEEPING MUCH!!!" moment with either software subsctiptions or in-game payments where the salami-slicing marketing logic fleeces you in small enough slices that you don't feel the pain. So, on principle, I refuse to even consider going there.

Of course, going there is fine for others if that's what they want. Photoshop CC subscription suits my brother .... at least for now. But not me.

[Moby-Dick]

Ain't marketing wonderful

I have, as you probably have noticed, much the same attitude to in-game payments as I do to subscription software, and for very similar reasons.

I like to know what things are going to cost me, if at all possible, before I commit myself. If I buy a game outright, it's cost me £x whether I play it for an hour and then never again, or 10 hours a week, for 6 months, and then do it all over 5 years later. And then another 5 years later. With validation and activation online, there's no certainty I can do that.

Similarly, with software, if I buy a package (or upgrade) I know, right now, that I will get those features and capabilities, pretty much indefinitely, for a specified £x. Examples would be Photoshop and MS Office. One of my machines still has Win97 and Office 97 on it. And it's still in use. Yeah, later versions are 'better', have more facilities etc, but that 16 year old combination still does what I needed of it when brand new, and need of it now. I upgraded Photoshop periodically too, but by no stretch of the inagination to every new version. And, before committing ANY funds to upgrading, I decide if it's needed at all, or justified by new or improved features. With a subscription model, I have an unknown and unquantifiable commitment to keep paying out.

Which is why I won't do it. Like your friend and his game, I know I risk facing a "HOW BLEEPING MUCH!!!" moment with either software subsctiptions or in-game payments where the salami-slicing marketing logic fleeces you in small enough slices that you don't feel the pain. So, on principle, I refuse to even consider going there.

Of course, going there is fine for others if that's what they want. Photoshop CC subscription suits my brother .... at least for now. But not me.

Slightly off topic , but would you not buy software maintenance for that reason?

[Saracen]

Slightly off topic , but would you not buy software maintenance for that reason?

Me personally?

It would depend on circumstances. For a business package, custom-developed, I think it's implicit in going down that route. Which means, there'd have to be a convincing reason for doing it. And, it's either software necessary for operation, or revenue-generating.

For off-the-shelf software, I expect it to do what it said on the box when I bought it. If it doesn't, I expect it to be fixed. I don't expect feature additions or enhancements to be free, though minor improvements often are.

But for personal purposes, or for my own business purposes, no I wouldn't. Or at least, have yet to see the need.

For instance, my accounts software has traditionally been offered with support/maintenance either or contract of pay-per-incident basis and I have always opted for per-incident .... and never yet needed to call on it. I also haven't upgraded versions in about 10 years, because I've not needed anything the existing version doesn't have.

I can conceive of circumstances where I might go for a support contract, but I've never been in them. For non-business use, it's a non-starter. If software required a maintenance contract, I wouldn't buy it in the first place.

Maybe you can think of some situation I haven't taken account of, but by and large, the answer to the question is "no".

[Mama Sumae]

I have given up on f2ps entirely, the moment you introduce in-game payments you are certain the gameplay will cater to it.

Either pay to enjoy where you buy items or experience boosters in order to avoid unpleasant amounts of grind. Pay to keep up where new and better items/characters are constantly introduced and keeping up with in-game gold farming alone is not possible. Or purely pay2win where real money items are obviously superior to other options.

Even if it all starts well and balanced the temptation to squeeze a little more is always there, especially when the revenues stagnate you will almost certainly see the fair game you have invested so much into (time and perhaps money) turn sour.

Honestly even a paid game like Diablo 3 saw a drop rate increase when the auction house was removed...