deanb Posted July 27, 2011 Report Share Posted July 27, 2011 So Steam has pulled DA2 from the store the day before the DLC is out. Once again for the whole "not letting EA get close to their customers through selling them DLC" stuff. (EA want to sell the DLC themselves, not through Steam) I'm kinda mixed/confused on this cos: DA:O the DLC can be bought through Bioware store with Bioware Points (eurgh), and Steam doesn't sell any of the DLC. So why is it up on the store still? Is Steam really doing this cos EA is selling the DLC their own way, cos if so then it's kinda crappy on Steams part for forcing people to get the entire game through them (even if 95% of people would like it that way) Some stuff doesn't quite add up, but if it did then shame on Steam for not letting people have the option to use an alternative store to buy DLC. And shame on EA for being cocks and forcing people to buy the game in separate parts across different services. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yantelope Posted July 27, 2011 Report Share Posted July 27, 2011 yeah, the idea of having to buy steam DLC for steam games is pretty crappy. Any version of the DLC should work with any copy of the game. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr W Phallus Posted July 27, 2011 Report Share Posted July 27, 2011 I think its more the fact EA aren't letting Steam sell the DLC, so why should they sell the game at all? EA are denying Steam business, so Steam are saying well screw you let's see how well your game sells without our support. It's not about Steam forcing people to buy through them, it's about Steam punishing EA for restricting the sale of DLC in the first place. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Saturnine Tenshi Posted July 27, 2011 Report Share Posted July 27, 2011 "EA for being cocks and forcing people to buy the game in separate parts" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hocking Posted July 27, 2011 Report Share Posted July 27, 2011 Last I read about the on-going fallout between EA and Valve was that EA were wanting to offer their patches and DLC exclusively through Origin - which violates either the Steam Terms of Service or some other agreement about content offered through the client. I find it rather amusing as during yesterdays EA Investor Conference Call; JR stated that while happy with how Origin is doing - he wants EA games to be available on all possible digital distribution platforms. Pretty counter productive to make such a statement and at the same time be trying to limit exactly how much service these platforms can offer in relation to your own product. Hypothetically speaking, it's akin to Universal happily allowing all of their films to play on any DVD/Blu-Ray player but only allowing you to access the special features of said films on their own proprietary player. Plain stupidity. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RockyRan Posted July 27, 2011 Report Share Posted July 27, 2011 (edited) Last I read about the on-going fallout between EA and Valve was that EA were wanting to offer their patches and DLC exclusively through Origin - which violates either the Steam Terms of Service or some other agreement about content offered through the client. I find it rather amusing as during yesterdays EA Investor Conference Call; JR stated that while happy with how Origin is doing - he wants EA games to be available on all possible digital distribution platforms. Pretty counter productive to make such a statement and at the same time be trying to limit exactly how much service these platforms can offer in relation to your own product. Hypothetically speaking, it's akin to Universal happily allowing all of their films to play on any DVD/Blu-Ray player but only allowing you to access the special features of said films on their own proprietary player. Plain stupidity. To EA, it's the idea of keeping 100% of the profits vs. 70% of the profits of DLC sold. They're so big that they think "well I'll make my own damn DLC distribution service and let everyone pay US instead". But there's a reason why this doesn't happen all the time. A very big reason, which EA seems to be completely oblivious to, is consumer convenience and potential fracturing of the user base. Like you said, Universal could very well manufacture their own players and make "exclusive" content for them, but the only thing that's going to do is discourage people from buying those movies in the first place if they think they're being shortchanged. With EA it's even worse. They're getting their games booted off by far the most popular platform on the PC, all because they want to make some more pennies on their DLC. They're going to lose a lot of sales of full-priced games just because they want to make more pennies per DLC. It's a very short sighted approach, but such is the way of large, publicly traded companies. Edited July 27, 2011 by RockyRan 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted July 27, 2011 Report Share Posted July 27, 2011 I'm kinda waiting for when they do their planned move of Origin to Mobile, cos I bet you Mr Jobs will have in place pretty much the same, if not stricter, TOS in place on App Store sales too. There's other DD platforms on PC, but for iPhone it's Apples way or the highway. Apple have a pretty clear "you give us 30% of anything n everything" deal going on, and that includes in-app purchases (something many newspaper/book/other developers weren't happy of since it included subscriptions too). And they certainly wouldn't try this on consoles. (once again cos it's pretty much their way or the highway, you can't just go to Direct2Xbox for some less lenient TOS) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yantelope Posted July 27, 2011 Report Share Posted July 27, 2011 To EA, it's the idea of keeping 100% of the profits vs. 70% of the profits of DLC sold. They're so big that they think "well I'll make my own damn DLC distribution service and let everyone pay US instead". I think this is the heart of the issue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luftwaffles Posted July 27, 2011 Report Share Posted July 27, 2011 To EA, it's the idea of keeping 100% of the profits vs. 70% of the profits of DLC sold. They're so big that they think "well I'll make my own damn DLC distribution service and let everyone pay US instead". Boy, I wish this wasn't the case, but it definitely is. I find this bizarre because of EA's apparent success in the Steam summer sale, though, particularly with Battlefield: Bad Company 2. I have 3 or 4 friends that didn't care about the Battlefield series at all, never played a single game, but when they saw that BC2 was on sale (with all the DLC) they went and picked up the game and all of the DLC, which is exactly what EA wants. If it wasn't on Steam, though, and it wasn't cheap, there was no way they were going to buy the game, much less all of the DLC. Sure, EA only gets 70% of those profits, but the profits are still going to be exponentially greater than if they decided to try and market the game on their own. Either EA realizes that and doesn't give a fuck, or they don't realize it and think they can make just as much money selling their games independently as they can on Steam. For the sake of Battlefield 3 and Mass Effect 3, I sure hope it's the former. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Saturnine Tenshi Posted July 27, 2011 Report Share Posted July 27, 2011 The crux is simple: people expect too much from EA. Putting aside their place as a video game company, EA is infamous for duplicity and asshattery. If anyone expects anything else from the sudden shift which clever marketing has put forth, it's their fault for being gullible. "Hey, guys. We're EA, and we're tubular now! We said so in an interview! We paid some game journalists to run some nifty articles on how we've changed!" "Will do!" Nothing questionable EA has done is much of a surprise when looking at their track record. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yantelope Posted July 27, 2011 Report Share Posted July 27, 2011 Yeah, I personally find myself not buying games from other download sites becasue I don't want to be running 15 gaming clients on my computer. I'm starting to wish that games would go back to the D2D way of no client, just downloadable games. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr W Phallus Posted July 27, 2011 Report Share Posted July 27, 2011 The crux is simple: people expect too much from EA. Putting aside their place as a video game company, EA is infamous for duplicity and asshattery. If anyone expects anything else from the sudden shift which clever marketing has put forth, it's their fault for being gullible. "Hey, guys. We're EA, and we're tubular now! We said so in an interview! We paid some game journalists to run some nifty articles on how we've changed!" "Will do!" Nothing questionable EA has done is much of a surprise when looking at their track record. The greed doesn't surprise me at all, but I'll never stop being amazed at the bad business sense companies will show. Ok so they have the big name titles like Mass Effect and Battlefield which means people probably will by their games, but in the long run they're missing out, as Sporkwaffles pointed out, on all the incidental buyers, the ones who catch it because it's in a Steam Sale, or even just from it being advertised on the Steam Store front page. At the end of the day I can't seem them coming of any better for it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted August 10, 2011 Report Share Posted August 10, 2011 http://tf2.com/post.php?id=6040 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yantelope Posted August 10, 2011 Report Share Posted August 10, 2011 Man, now I feel tempted to play TF2 just to get suckers to give me games. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted September 27, 2011 Report Share Posted September 27, 2011 Any UK legal person able to verify this fact? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted September 27, 2011 Report Share Posted September 27, 2011 I'm not a UK legal person, but I went and read that law, and it certainly seems like that guy might be right. Steam sales are kind of hard to classify under that law though. For instance, it says it doesn't apply to sales by automatic vending machines or automated commercial premises. Also, the only place it specifically references computer software it says the seller need only provide a refund if the software is still sealed, which doesn't really have any bearing on Steam sales. So just a quick reading of the law makes it seem like it's certainly possible that people in the UK have the right to a refund from Steam within 7 days of the purchase, and assuming that transcript is real it certainly seems like Steam thinks you have that right. I wouldn't go using it as a 7-day demo of every game, but if you got a game that you really felt strongly that you deserved your money back I'd give it a shot. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted October 28, 2011 Report Share Posted October 28, 2011 So some folks recently discovered http://www.steamcalculator.com/ and gone "wow I've spent $1570.05 USD on Steam" when in reality you've spent $498. It's not very good as it just looks at your library and then adds up the current price of the games you own. So if you got it in a sale for 80% off that's instantly going to inflate the value Steam Calculator comes up with. For example for me it starts off right away with Alien Breed 2: Assault for $10. I got it free with my Summer Camp tickets. It also adds stuff like HIB games you've added and any games you've been gifted and all that. To get the actual amount you need to go to your Account. you can either follow this link and sign in (beware Steam Guard will kick in) or hit up the link in the top right hand side of the Steam client that says Username's Account. Then on this page click the "Store Transactions" link and voila: http://dl.dropbox.co...s_account_2.png Then open up Calc and work it out to find the true amount you've spent. You can include what you've gifted too, though most likely with these it may be to pay off someone who gifted to you. A bonus with combining your account page n Steam Calculator site is you can figure out how much you've saved. In my case about $1000. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted October 29, 2011 Report Share Posted October 29, 2011 Current value of my Steam account: $1224.08. What I've actually spent, not counting gifts: $448.64 (counting retail purchases) What I've spent counting gifts: $489.11 I feel like I should count gifts I've bought since the total value is counting gifts I've received. Either way though, I've spent much less than half the current value, which makes me happy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pirandello Posted November 2, 2011 Report Share Posted November 2, 2011 Mine's roughly about $680. Which is odd, because I certainly don't remember spending that much. Steam deals are awesome. If I recall correctly, the only game I paid full price for on my list is Bad Company 2. Which went on sale a week after I bought it. Grr. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thorgi Duke of Frisbee Posted November 2, 2011 Report Share Posted November 2, 2011 $2,629.74 FUCK THAT IS A LOT OF MONEY Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kovach_ Posted November 2, 2011 Report Share Posted November 2, 2011 ^^ Whoah. I'm at a mere 300$ >.> Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RockyRan Posted November 2, 2011 Report Share Posted November 2, 2011 I've spent about $360. Not bad, but damn these <$5 deals rack up quickly >_< Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hot Heart Posted November 2, 2011 Report Share Posted November 2, 2011 Mine is the whopping sum of £54.86. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Saturnine Tenshi Posted November 2, 2011 Report Share Posted November 2, 2011 $1083.82 Not doing the math for what I've actually spent. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mal Posted November 3, 2011 Report Share Posted November 3, 2011 $1456.16 I most likely spent not even half of that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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