The Human Torch said:
Even though I find that picture amusing, it's very naieve to think like that. What if (in 1999) they already developed the first expansion pack alongside the original game? What if (the last "now" picture), the game is bigger than the 1999 game, including it's two expansions? What if a $15 expansion pack has the same amount of content as the $30 expansion pack?
Do you think that developers are less consumer friendly and profit driven than in 1999? Of course not, but thanks to the internet, these kind of business practices are made public more often than not. We were always walking wallets to them. A developer may have 'love' for developing games, but in the end that that love needs to be translated into money at the bank.
*I snipped out the picture, in case someone reading this didn't notice. Just scroll up a bit to the comment I quoted, you'll see it.*
See, the problem is that nobody develops an expansion pack at the same time or even immediately after a game comes out. I have never heard of a single instance of a game and its expansion pack releasing simultaneously. The other problem is that in the picture, each Mona Lisa may not be to scale in relation to each other, but they are certainly to scale with the bits being sold.
This isn't news to you. But surely you can see how this feels really abusive. What is EA's policy? That whole "Whatever, you'll buy it" attitude they had on South Park. The games never go on sale, are the slowest games to drop in price, the DLC never goes down in price, and it's usually roughly 10 dollars for any given expansion. And these are generally just one mission (Mass Effect Series), or an entire game mode locked off because you didn't preorder from Best Buy (lookin at you, Army of Two: TFD). For the same ten dollars, I could get on Steam, or in some cases Xbox Live, and buy a full game. These content packs EA sell manage to be small enough to not be "essential", yet expensive enough to make the asking price something of an insult. People have a right to some extent to be pissed off. Yeah, we could just ignore it, but parts are starting to get cut out of these games (project ten dollar), or purposefully held back in order to sell to us as DLC (this new prothean thing). EA has a right to charge us for the prothean. They
can, that doesn't mean they
should.
This business may be on the up-and-up, but it still doesn't feel right.It's as though someone runs a stable, and as you browse, you see lots of horses (of course). Many horses are sold there, and if you really like your horse, you can come back and the dealers will sell you either a full-on saddle, or perhaps horse shoes/extra saddle bags. You order a horse ahead of time from Mr. EA, a notoriously greedy and wealthy horse breeder. He brings out his horse and you see very plainly that it has a saddle. Suddenly, he snatches it up and hides it behind his back. "Here's your horse", he says.
"Hey, wait a minute," says you, "That horse had a saddle!".
"Yes it did, Mr. You, you're quite perceptive. See, this saddle is DLC, and you've only agreed to purchase the Standard Edition of this horse. The Collector's Edition horse recieves free horseshoes, as well as this here saddle pack. If you'd like your horse shoed and saddled, it will be ten extra gold for each service."
This is the point at which we find ourselves. Many people here are angry, that Mr. EA would try to keep saddles and horseshoes from them, then charge them ten extra gold for each at a later date. They're being forced to pay more gold at the whims of Mr. EA. He has the horseshoes now, there's nothing stopping him from just giving us the horseshoes or the saddle, he's holding them back, knowing that we'll pay him extra to get these things. We
could ride a shoeless horse, or without a saddle, but we're missing things. The ride isn't as smooth, we can't ride as far.
This is why I buy all my horses from Mr. Valve. Mr. Valve doesn't really give a damn about me. He's got no more interest in me as a person than Mr. EA does, and his intent is no more noble. The difference is that Mr. Valve often puts his horses on sale. Mr. Valve has tons of horses that come with free horseshoes or saddles or whatever. Sometimes buying a horse from Mr. Valve will get you a free set of horseshoes or a saddle for a completely different horse. On occasion you get horseshoes for both horses, if you have one horse and buy another. Mr. Valve sells his horseshoes for a single gold coin, maybe two. He's even introduced a system on one of his horses (skyrim, the fanciest pony in the land) that allows rider-made horseshoes and saddles to automatically download, update, and install themselves on your pony each time you ride it. In fact, you can even search the whole warehouse full of horseshoes and saddles, all available for free, and keep track of the ones you like. Your horses and ponies even get groomed, updated if you will, free of charge, on a regular basis.
Can you see it now? Do you understand why people (including me) are pissed at EA on a regular basis? It's not because we're lazy, cheap, jerkwads. We're all lazy, cheap, jerkwads here.
It's because Mr. EA is an asshole. He's a penny-pinching, greedy little punk. He has a part of his horse he knows he can get away with selling to us for extra, and he's doing so. People do it all the time. Those people are entitled to do what they do, but those people are also assholes. Nobody likes them. Mr. EA can charge for the ability to make this prothean character a squadmate, along with some alternate skins. I think he's just being a money grubbing jerk, he's already rich and this is his chance to make even more cash on top of the boatloads he already will with the release of his new pony. He's made no attempt to hide his intentions, and although he's within his rights to do what he does, I consider him an asshole for his decision. I don't generally buy things from assholes. I don't care how nice his pony is. I like my ponies with all the available trimmings. This guy wants to upsell me these trimmings on a pony I've never even seen before. He's not giving me incentive, he's warning me about the consequences of not gettting the most expensive version of this pony as soon as possible. If I don't order the collector's pony, I'll get a pony, but I'll be missing on the trimmings. Hell, I'll miss out on bits of this pony if I buy it from the wrong pony-vending kiosk. Parts of this pony were ready before the pony's even been bred, but those bits have been witheld as trimmings, solely so that I would buy the collector's pony. I'm pissed about that stuff. I don't like paying this much more for a "completed"-feeling pony.
I'm going to buy this pony. Only this one time, because the mare looks good and I've already bought the mares that led up to this one. Might as well see it through to the finish. However, this long, tortured metaphor is my defense for my anger towards Mr. EA's business practices. He's an asshole, and I don't like buying ponies from an asshole pony breeder. When I buy ponies from an asshole pony breeder like Mr. EA, along with my beloved trimmings and saddle and horseshoes, it gives him the idea that we're fine with it. That we'll pay anything he wants, because we "need" our trimmings. We get systems like Origin, designed so that he can upsell us on ponies from the comfort of our own home. Now Mr. Ubisoft has got it in his head that he can sell us ponies that you can only ride while he's watching you. On top of that, he's tried to sell me the same damn assassin pony 3 times now.
So there you have it. Buying ponies from asshole pony breeders begets more asshole pony breeders. I have to suck it up, just this once, for the sake of this beautiful and majestic pony. That doesn't mean I have to like it when this guy tries to charge me for the pony's ability to trot, or to charge me 15 gold to ride my pony in a single new location.
With that, I'm done here. I'm going to bed, and in the morning I'll be checking the new Daily Deal over at Valve's Store for Trading Equines and Mares, or "S.T.E.A.M." for short.
