EA To Try and Profit From Used Game Sales.

Maes said:

Then there will be illegal/unofficial servers....and cracking will just shift paradigm.

These already exist in various forms. Look up "server emulator" and you'll see tons of entries, even for the less popular games. They may not be as feature rich, but they get the job done. Some games that never had true online can also be tricked using programs such as Hamachi, so even if the community dies out or the servers do, there are ways around it.

Snarboo said:

Some games that never had true online can also be tricked using programs such as Hamachi, so even if the community dies out or the servers do, there are ways around it.

Tell me and Jodwin about it ;-) Ironically, one such game worked actually better over Hamachi because the LAN netcode was used, which was much more error-resilient than the "real" wild-Internet netcode...go figure.

Don't like EA or their questionable business practice? Vote with your wallet.

Doom Marine said:

Don't like EA or their questionable business practice? Vote with your wallet.

...and watch as they make money anyway.

Doom Marine said:

Don't like EA or their questionable business practice? Vote with your wallet.

There's too many idiots to make that a viable strategy, see Activision.

Doom Marine said:

Don't like EA or their questionable business practice? Vote with your wallet.

Yeah...I've been boycotting Walmart for well over a decade. They still own the world.

Yeah...I've been boycotting Walmart for well over a decade. They still own the world. [/B]

Really? I've never seen only one Walmart in germany, though i know, they are existant. ;-)

BTW: http://www.mediabiz.de/games/news/gebrauchtkaeufer-pfeifen-auf-eas-project-ten-dollar/289760?rss=1&premium=N&navi=00000000&t=1&printScreen=1

It is in german, you can try Google for a translation.
There is written, that approximately just 70% of the first time buyers used the codes, and that the second hand buys for the codes are far below 10%.

I don't play EA Sports games, so fuck 'em. The sad fact is that, as TDA said, these big publishers have far too many games-gannets prepared to eat dick no matter how much they are fucked over, and in a lot of cases they are too thick even to realise they're being fucked over (*cough*MW2*cough*).

Fuck it, just play Doom. Doom is your friend, and always will be. Even on Steam.

A lot of people hate EA already... now they'll hate them even more!

I literally don't have any EA games. I don't. I wish I did, but I don't.

EA games have such little resale value as it is, that's why I can go to my local Game Stop and see 200 discs each EA games and each for $1.

geo said:

I can go to my local Game Stop and see 200 discs each EA games and each for $1.

Buy some, turn them into clocks and sell them for a tidy profit.

cybdmn said:

Really? I've never seen only one Walmart in germany, though i know, they are existant. ;-)

Interestinly enough, since I moved to Toronto I've never been to a Wal-Mart and I've only seen one. Here in Canada they primarily set up fort in small cities and in cases even large towns. I guess they know it's hard to compete in a city with a million specialty stores.

Danarchy said:

My solution: stop buying any video games made by anyone.

Did you buy your Action Doom 2 copy yet?

cybdmn said:

Really? I've never seen only one Walmart in germany, though i know, they are existant. ;-)

Because LIDL would make Walmart its bitch.

So, err, what's the big deal? There are already games which make you register a CD-key when signing up for multiplayer, and make it impossible to reuse the same CD-key for an other account. If you'd sell such a game second hand after using your CD-key there would be no way for the buyer to play online anymore. At least EA's model gives the second hand buyer a choice, which is much better than a straight "NO!"

Danarchy said:

My solution: stop buying any video games made by anyone.

Scuba Steve said:

Did you buy your Action Doom 2 copy yet?

In today's corporate world, any 'business' that makes less than 1000 USD in revenue annually doesn't amount to anything compared to companies that make many orders of magnitude more in profits.

Yeah, I'm still cool with buying stuff by independant developers. Also, I still buy stuff over Steam...for way below retail price. >_>

Yeah, I have seen a thread about this in the DW forum. This have bugged me like hell with EA since I really like the Skate series.

I bought Skate3 this week even though I felt bad for doing it. The guy at the gamestore told me that you could sell the game and the new owner woudln't have to pay to play online and stuff. BUT, I was about to upload a replay I recorded and the game told me to enter the code I recieved with my game. This code is a 1 time code only so if I sell my game the new owner will have to go to the PS store and buy a new code so he/she can enter the skate.reel (the place where you share videos and maps etc). For me, skate.reel is a big part of the game and if I coudln't use skate.reel the game would be almost pointless.

I hate EA and myself for buying the game.

Then why not post it in the original thread? Posting this on the side is rather extaneous

timeline

I can live without Skate, hell, I can live without any EA titles. All they really put out is sports games.

I don't know why these greedy publishers feel like they are entitled to money from used game sales

Greedy my arse. Keeping those servers players connect to online costs quite a deal of money, now add everything they lose to piracy and progressive taxation...hell, I'm amazed they're still in business after all these years.

They don't cash a cent when you buy a used game, they owe you nothing.

Yeah, all of that piracy and maintaining servers and they still have a multi-billion dollar revenue. I think they'll be in business a little while longer. Can't be for sure, but prospects point up. Activision had a net profit of $381,000,000 in the first quarter alone if I'm not mistaken.

Also, film, music, auto, book, etc. industries that don't profit from the sale of used items, what makes video games so special?

EA isn't trying to profit, they're trying to break even. Especially because with a yearly release of sports games, no one NEEDs to buy the game, so it divides their buying audience, because people figure, eh I'll just get it next year or the year after that.

It's all about control, that is all.

Its all about companies sinking.

On a $60 game...
$12 goes to the store that sold it
$12 goes to Nintendo / X-Box / PS
$36 goes to the publisher and the publisher decides how much the developer gets.

Gamespot will buy your $60 game for $20-30 and sell it for $50-55 bucks. People would rather buy $50-$55, cause its cheaper. Gamespot makes that $50-55 NOT EA or any other company. There is no regulation on game companies getting compensation at all like there is for DVDs / movies / television and so on.

So if a game sells 2 million copies new, that's only $72 million for the publisher.

BUT if a game sells 1 million copies new and 1 million copies used... that's $36 million for the publisher and $42 million for Gamespot.

With EA making people pay money to use online functionality for USED games, 1 million new / 1 million used becomes $46 million for the publisher. That's not profit, that's just income and not expense.

You'll find there's no regulation on things like DVDs. You can sell used ones and collect all the profits you want.

If game companies want to milk the thing by creating dubious online functionality then that's their choice. Where it crosses an ethical line is when the activation occurs for something with no online functionality or is necessary when you don't want to use any of the online part. Some gamers will be happy to buy a cheaper copy with no online components. That's their choice too.

The other thing that pisses me off is publishers/developers who think they deserve an automatic cut of used sales. Nope. They can go to hell (I have told some game devs this personally).

Snakes said:

Also, film, music, auto, book, etc. industries that don't profit from the sale of used items

Rest assured that they're working on it. A somewhat weak example are those car dealerships that "retire" your old car for a small discount if you buy a new one, thus subtracting one car from the used car market and gaining from recycling it (presumably).

I don't mind that idea. It's starting to appear with computers, though I don't think recycling them gives you a discount.

My DVD rental information must be out of date, they used to give the studio or whoever 40% of everything made off rentals. Now there is a flat fee.

Aliotroph? said:

I don't mind that idea.

You will when all music has DRM locks that prevent ripping etc. as well as making you pay to allow it to be played on anything other than a proprietary music player...