EA Decries Steam Sales: "They Cheapen Intellectual Property"

[Sean951]

If that is the argument, then I demand that I pay a smaller price for my digital version.

1) There is no hard copy to pay production and shipping on
2) They get 100% of the profits, none going to the store
3) They still own MY game. I merely rent it

If they priced online games accordingly, then I think they would see more people buying them without needing the sales. I feel the same way about eBooks, although I feel like authors will soon set up sites where they can sell their works without the publisher, and I look forward to this day.

 

[Signa]

Not shocking to hear them say that, because they are in the IP business. Not devaluing their business is a good idea. What they are failing to realize is what is good for consumers can also be good for business. Valve found that balance, and EA can too, but not with that attitude.

 

[cerealnmuffin]

They say they want to be Nordstrom and not Target, but fail to realize that both of those places have different products based on quality. Steam and Origin offer much of the same. Sure I don't think the quality of clothes scales to the prices of Nordstrom, though the quality of Target stuff leaves much to be desired so I usually shop for clothes at in between boutiques ANYWAY, point still stands they are offering same product.

Maybe if Origin offered drm free stuff where you don't need to be online to use can be good. There are times I forgot to switch Steam to offline mode and thus couldn't play games on international flights. -_-

 

[Prosis]

I don't really buy Origin's standpoint.

If I want to buy a game, I buy it. If I hold off on buying it, its because I don't think its worth the money it costs. Games are expensive. And unless I'm going to get my money's worth, I'm not going to buy it.

About half of my steam games I would have never purchased at all if they didn't have their prices cut. That is, they would have gotten $0 profit from me.
Also, most of their big sales (50% or more) are games that are more than a year old. And it's pretty solid data that most game sales drop rapidly after release, until they are almost nonexistant about 6 months later.

Steam sales don't occur because they're popular. They occur because they're profitable. Origin is kind of shooting itself in the foot.

 

[Loonyyy]

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/06/06/hmm-ea-on-steamorigin-mega-sales/#more-110982

"We [Origin] won?t be doing that [deep-discounting in sales]. Obviously they think it?s the right thing to do after a certain amount of time. I just think it cheapens your intellectual property. I know both sides of it, I understand it. If you want to sell a whole bunch of units, that is certainly a way to do that, to sell a whole bunch of stuff at a low price. The gamemakers work incredibly hard to make this intellectual property, and we?re not trying to be Target. We?re trying to be Nordstrom. When I say that, I mean good value ? we?re trying to give you a fair price point, and occasionally there will be things that are on sale you could look for a discount, just don?t look for 75 percent off going-out-of-business sales."

Thoughts? Were you able to get through that without exploding into merry guffaws?

Let me correct that for him: "We dislike Steam sales because they undercut our prices, and we can't take fair capitalism, so we resort to pure sophistry and making shit up about intellectual property."

In all seriousness, this is why people hate EA. They're not just greedy, amoral jerks, they're stupid ones constantly telling us that they are greedy, amoral jerks.

 

[Zhukov]

It's made even funnier by the fact that Origin is currently running a big 50% off sale.

 

[Danne]

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/06/06/hmm-ea-on-steamorigin-mega-sales/#more-110982

"We [Origin] won?t be doing that [deep-discounting in sales]. Obviously they think it?s the right thing to do after a certain amount of time. I just think it cheapens your intellectual property. I know both sides of it, I understand it. If you want to sell a whole bunch of units, that is certainly a way to do that, to sell a whole bunch of stuff at a low price. The gamemakers work incredibly hard to make this intellectual property, and we?re not trying to be Target. We?re trying to be Nordstrom. When I say that, I mean good value ? we?re trying to give you a fair price point, and occasionally there will be things that are on sale you could look for a discount, just don?t look for 75 percent off going-out-of-business sales."

Thoughts? Were you able to get through that without exploding into merry guffaws?

Let me correct that for him: "We dislike Steam sales because they undercut our prices, and we can't take fair capitalism, so we resort to pure sophistry and making shit up about intellectual property."

In all seriousness, this is why people hate EA. They're not just greedy, amoral jerks, they're stupid ones constantly telling us that they are greedy, amoral jerks.

*Directs to EA hate thread* Please. Step into my office. I think this is just some more corporate bull crap EA is pulling.

 

[madster11]

Once again, EA being idiots?
Not surprising at all.

Simple, EA doesn't intend to compete with steam. Look at some of the massive releases they've had for PC. Mass Effect 3 and Battlefield 3. Both large franchises with a huge fanbase and both aren't on steam. They'll force these fans and fans of other franchises to use Origin and build it up that way, without having to do anything as shocking as actually offering prices lower than the what you'd see at brick and mortar stores.

Yeah, except for the fact that i personally know several people who torrented Mass Effect 3 specifically BECAUSE they had to use Origin.
Shit, i download anything that has SecuROM on it even if i don't want to play it, just to make a point. You can be damn sure i'll never buy anything from Origin, or even anything that requires origin.

 

[Loonyyy]

*Directs to EA hate thread* Please. Step into my office. I think this is just some more corporate bull crap EA is pulling.

Not my point. Although this tired cliche of declaring that someone "hates" EA if they criticize something they do is inane.

Most of the publishers are greedy, and self interested. We don't notice largely, and we don't generally hate them, until they actually let us know:

-Activision announcing that they deliberately run series into the ground with many sequels for short term profits. Scratch that, basically anything Bobby Kotick says makes them look bad.
-Ubisoft declaring that their always on DRM is a success.
-Silicon Knights announcing that the reason games are too expensive is because not enough people are buying new, therefore, they must compete with new games sales by raising prices (Yes, not a publisher, technically, but you get my drift).

If none of these companies announced their strategies, we'd simply ignore them. They'd do what they exist to do: try to make money. It's funny, and ridiculous, when they TELL us that they're doing it. I've no particular Animus for EA in particular, so I've no idea what you mean by insinuating I hate them. I'm saying people hate them because EA themselves let people know why they shouldn't like them. The "Corporate Bull Crap" is clearly being made by people who aren't too knowledgeable about what they're doing.

 

[Something Amyss]

Yeah, except for the fact that i personally know several people who torrented Mass Effect 3 specifically BECAUSE they had to use Origin.

Which is still a drop in the bucket and rather meaningless. ME3 nearly doubled the sales of the prior ME title.

 

[Soopy]

Hrmm, in a normal retail environment. A distributor will purchase in bulk from a publisher. So the Publisher and developer have already been paid before you purchase the game.

Is this not the case with Steam?

 

[madster11]

Which is still a drop in the bucket and rather meaningless. ME3 nearly doubled the sales of the prior ME title.

EA still lost a hundred thousand sales or more they would have got if it was released on steam and then went onto sale.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Whatever you say EA, just don't expect to make nearly as much money as Valve does.

 

[Ryotknife]

He's kind of right. Developers work hard to make games, by just waiting for prices to drop and sales to come up, they don't get the amount of money that the developer may deserve. I'd personally aim to sell games at $30-40 online (For the AAA budget title), this allows developers to get the amount that they are shooting for, while still providing cheap enough value for consumers.

Apparently Valve noted an uptick in interest in a product after a sale, even after the sale had ended. I'm guess that's why they keep doing these sales. If all they were doing was driving their profit margin down into the dirt, they'd likely stop doing it.

And while I don't want to jump on the anti-EA bandwagon (even though I was a charter member from many, many years ago), this particular message coming from them of all people is high comedy.

The thing with valve though is its very rarely their games that go on sale. Its a lot easier to put stuff on sale when your not really cutting into your own margin but instead somebody elses. If EA were to do similar sales they would be cutting into their own margin instead of somebody elses. EA also does not have the same quantity of games to allow them to take the loss just to bring in more customers.

anc[is]I once heard a statistic (In one of Totalbiscut's vids, I can't be bothered to go fishing for it) where a game had a 1100% increase in profits during a sale. That's profits, not number of units sold. EA needs to get their heads out of their ass. One single sale on the entirety of Sims 3 would net them more money than their microtransaction BS ever will. The price point on that game and all the expansions is way too intimidating.

But at the same time TB argues that sales/bundles are supposed to be where games "go to die".There is a big difference when steam throws a game up for sale that has been out for years than a game that has been our for like 3 or so months.
It really does promote gamers to think twice about buying games at full price. For example say you bought Dungeon Defenders on release date, then two weeks later you see it on sale on steam for like 50% off, that much of a depreciation in so little time essentially is a kick in the nuts to you, the early adopter. It basically tells you the consumer that their game wasn't worth their initial asking price.

The same thing goes for Steam's winter and summer sales, if a game comes out a month or two before those sales you shouldn't bother to buy them because you're almost guaranteed to get at least 33%+ off.

And while yes some sales can come in with huge profits, you always have to question how many full price sales did you lose by putting the game on sale so early as oppose to if you had waited like a year and then had the huge sale.

You also have to take into consideration how old the game was before it went on sale and how many copies it was selling. Its not hard to bring your profits up 1100% by putting a game that nobody was buying up for 75% off.

?

i got portal 2 for 20 bucks in less than 4 months since the game was released.

left 4 dead 2 for 30 bucks within the first two months.

and yea, i plan on waiting till thanksgiving and hoping (key word here) that borderlands 2 will go on sale, although i will probably buy BL2 DLC for full price.

 

[ResonanceSD]

"We aren't going to compete on price, service quality, or general huggability."

Shortly afterwards, EA's share price tanked so fucking hard, there's a hole in the floor of the NYSE.

 

[Deadyawn]

I'm not sure I understand. EA doesn't want to have sales as extravagant as steam because it "cheapens your intelectual property"?

Am I missing something here? Isn't that the point? That its cheaper? Because its on SALE?

Speaking purely as an end user I can't really see too many down sides to Valve's business model here. They get more money and I get more games. It seems to me like if EA wants any sort of chance of competing with valve then they're going to have to come up with some sort of incentive to use origin beyond the fact that they only release certain games on it. Because if it comes down to whether I can buy a game for five dollars on steam or ten dollars on origin I'm just going to go with the better price.

 

[Bleidd Whitefalcon]

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/06/06/hmm-ea-on-steamorigin-mega-sales/#more-110982

"We [Origin] won?t be doing that [deep-discounting in sales]. Obviously they think it?s the right thing to do after a certain amount of time. I just think it cheapens your intellectual property. I know both sides of it, I understand it. If you want to sell a whole bunch of units, that is certainly a way to do that, to sell a whole bunch of stuff at a low price. The gamemakers work incredibly hard to make this intellectual property, and we?re not trying to be Target. We?re trying to be Nordstrom. When I say that, I mean good value ? we?re trying to give you a fair price point, and occasionally there will be things that are on sale you could look for a discount, just don?t look for 75 percent off going-out-of-business sales."

Thoughts? Were you able to get through that without exploding into merry guffaws?

No. I made it a couple lines in before I gave up. EA is just pulling their normal bull. Hell, wasn't it just the other day that they said they wanted to be indie?

 

[Dryk]

I keep forgetting to mention, this is extra funny considering that yesterday we had that "EA: We just want to be indie" thread.

This is wrong.

A product is only worth what people are willing to pay for it. And the developers do not necessarily deserve any specific amount of money.

I would like to add to this that it's the developer's job to live within their means. If they don't think their game will sell enough and they need to sell lots of other stuff to prop up development, maybe they should consider just cutting content, or not using that extra shader, or not buying that Superbowl ad.