News - EA will build microtransactions into all its games

[HEXUS]

Many a mickle makes a muckle.

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[Smudger]

If this is the way games are going to go, I think I'll just stick with PS3 and VMs on the PC. GOG will probably get a lot more business out of this....

[crossy]

It’s no surprise that EA is sold on the microtransactions model but that these mini-payments will appear in ALL future EA titles might be a shock to some people. EA must feel, however, that the mini-payment complaints come from a vocal minority

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. Thankfully most of my recent purchases have been on the Amazon app store where at least they do warn you of in app purchases.

Getting back to the EA thing, presumably because they're "leveraging" this new payment method, the "sticker price" of games will fall. So presumably Battlefield 4 on the PC will be <£20 new?

Actually no, I can't see that happening either.

[Smudger]

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...

[crossy]

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...

WOW - that's just about the full price for something like the Sims on PC (£37 and change on Game's website). No way would I be prepared to pay the same price as a game for some slab of DLC.

Is this the Gillette theory of business - sell the razor (in this case the game) at cost, but sting the suckers for the consumables?

[cassist]

I already paid for the damn game, why should I keep on spending money on it after I bought it, this is just a cheap trick from EA to rip us off, this is just stupid.

[jim]

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.

[kalniel]

Getting back to the EA thing, presumably because they're "leveraging" this new payment method, the "sticker price" of games will fall. So presumably Battlefield 4 on the PC will be <£20 new?

Actually no, I can't see that happening either.

Well it might prevent them rising. Games are far cheaper in real terms than they used to be, while development costs are higher.

[Kanoe]

All the game publishes seem to think we all want to play games that are Pay to Win. I hope they all go out of business if they continue to go in this direction. Kinda defeats putting any real effort into playing the games anymore if someone can splash the cash and get better stuff then you have been grinding for months for.

[Biscuit]

If battlefield 4 uses this too heavily then it can count me out. I dont mind the premium thing they had going on with BF3, it actually worked out pretty well IMO, if they diverge from this and you end up having essential or extremely useful items as individually purchasable, no thanks.

[Matsy]

This is just pathetic.
If they need to do this sort of crap games should be B2P, buy to play with a cosmetic micro-translation system that is PURELY cosmetic, nothing else.

[Tpyo]

IMO...

I personally hate feeling like I'm being double charged. If I buy a game, it should have the full functionality of the game without requiring additional payments (I'd note that I don't mind paying for specific add-on packs etc. that are actually new content). I can also see why being able to buy stuff to cut corners might appeal to some people BUT it should never be intrusive to the game, and should not confer any advantage that could not be obtained through 'hard work' within the game (especially not where multiplayer games are concerned).

Case in point - a 'good' version of in game microtransactions for me is League of Legends. The game is free (though you can buy it ang get various bits n' bobs). Paying money can help you level faster or obtain additional champions faster BUT the only things that can be bought for cash that are not obtainable through gameplay are the skins - purely aesthetic.

Case in point - a 'bad' version of double paying - any MMORPG type thing where they expect you to pay full whack to buy the game, but then can only actually play it online with a subscription. Make the game free (or at least cheap!) and then charge a monthly subscription, charge the game at full price but make the subscription itself free/VERY cheap OR, more realistically and as some of them do, bundle a 2–3 months subscription with the initial purchase of the game. When that expires, the plyer can decide if they want to extend the subscription at the full rate or not.

[shaithis]

Oh well, more reason to pirate future EA titles.

I hate hidden costs.

[sykobee]

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...

£35 is hardly a "micro" transaction is it. And that's what gets me about this entire model - the cost to purchase the add-ons is stupidly high, and appear to be targeted at children purchasing on their parent's systems.

I refuse to play any "Free To Play with Microtransactions" game these days. They're pointless - you can't proceed if you actually get into the game without spending an inordinate amount of money that is higher than what the game should have cost in the first place. They're hardly "Free To Play" - the language used has to be clarified so consumers know what they are signing up for. At best they're a demo, or feature limited variant. However you pay more to unlock the features - but only until your in-game credits run out. The whole model is disgusting, and I blame Zynga and the other blood-sucking companies run by greedy suits.

[Chadders87]

This seems to be the model for all mobile games out at the moment. Free to Play with good starting levels, equipment but then once your addicted they change the rules requireing hefty in-app purchases to get any further.

To name and shame a few: Zenonia 3, Farm Simulator 2013 (Now costs £1 for base app), actually... just looking at the Play Stores top free games list and there all in-app funded. I assume the iStore or whatever it's called is the same.

At least PC games provide a decent playing experience in Free 2 Plays without NEEDING to pay, although I tend to fully support the game with a few purchases if I enjoy the game enough, but it's my choice to make those purchases and they don't often give me an advantage over players who don't purchase bits.

Unless EA meet the consumers in the middle with a small purchase price for the base game and premium in app purchases for in-game luxuries only, then they will end up alienating their core customers.

[Spud1]

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

tl;dr? Free to play is a horrible model and micro transactions add no value to our games



Sometimes I really wonder if EA have partnered with the UK/US governments in an effort to get kids to stop playing video games and to go out into the world at large - seriously is their company mission statement "To remove all the fun and pleasure from gaming"?

"Free to Play" (in quotes as its never free to play) is the single worst thing to happen to gaming, ever. Worse than price rises, piracy, in-game adverts, console ports, Deux Ex 2..all combined.

Why? Because it makes gaming so much more expensive and so much less attractive at the same time...whilst also legitimising cheating!! We all know that with a traditional game, you buy the game and pay a set fee - typically £30-£40, and that's your lot. You don't *need* to spend any more money to get the same experience, and you can be confident that your online experience will be as fair as possible, allowing for the usual hackers/cheaters.

With "FTP", you have two problems.

1) You don't know how much your game will cost. You start out with part of the game for free, and then are forced to pay again, and again, and again for things that ordinarily would be included as standard game. This is a huge issue but one that can be easily managed with the right attitude from the publishers. DLC is a good example here - it can be done right (e.g. with Mass Effect, where it's just like a traditional expansion pack) and it can be done very wrong (like recent COD games where you get a tiny number of maps included with the game [especially zombies] and must buy the DLC to get any more).

2) Legitimised cheating - this is my biggest problem with FTP. Unless it's done perfectly, you turn online gaming into a "who has the most money to waste" competition. Team Fortress 2 is a very good example of this, where you can purchase new weapons, keys to unlock crates etc etc etc..all things that make you into a stronger player who's harder to kill - it's completely unfair on the rest of the gamers out there. I stopped playing TF2 the moment it went FTP and refuse to go back - and whats worse I can't even get a refund considering that I paid for a game that turned into something else. MMORPGs have a similar problem if players can "buy" a top level armour set or weapon. I don't play Guild Wars/STO or any other MMORPGs that suffer from this disease but there are many that do.

Of course you can integrate micro transactions in a good way too - Diablo III did a very good job with its real money auction house in my opinion, purely as the act of you spending £1000 on weapons/armour doesn't have a negative impact on anyone elses play experience. Many other games also offer nice cosmetic addons as micropayments (World of Warcraft Non combat pets or mounts for example) which again, don't directly impact other players. It's rare to see something done so well though.


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!