Epic Games’ president has a plan to fight used game sales |
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BY Dennis Lesica November 10th, 2008 |
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Mike Capps, president of Epic Games, is mad as hell and he’s not going to take it anymore. With the secondhand game market (read: used) sassing the publishers and encroaching on profits from new games sold, he’s come up with a potential solution to the problem: sell game endings as DLC.
Capps said, “I’ve talked to some developers who are saying ‘If you want to fight the final boss you go online and pay USD 20, but if you bought the retail version you got it for free’. We don’t make any money when someone rents it, and we don’t make any money when someone buys it used - way more than twice as many people played Gears than bought it.”
Sure, it’s a romantic notion that sounds great on paper — like Communism — but really, this couldn’t work. Forgetting there are people unable or unwilling to connect their consoles to the Internet, you’d have those that rely on the cheaper prices of used games to even be able to play and an inevitable boycott from the hardcore of the hardcore. It’s bad news bears all around.
How do you feel about this as a potential solution and what can you see as a friendlier, more “middle ground” approach to the problem? I say cheaper price points and less mediocre games. I also throw in a vote for the thai massage, but I’m a forward thinking kind of guy that doesn’t have time for rules, the law or making my bed.
November 10th, 2008
at 3:57 pm
First Kotick’s crazy GHTunes subscription suggestion, and now this?
November must be National Terrible Idea Month.
November 10th, 2008
at 3:59 pm
Yeah, that was seriously a terrible idea. I doubt the seriousness, but still.
November 10th, 2008
at 4:01 pm
Thai massage is an idea I can get behind!
November 10th, 2008
at 4:06 pm
that man can **** **** and **** ****** *********.
What an monster.
November 10th, 2008
at 4:07 pm
Once again proving that they really do only care about profits and not about us gamers.
November 10th, 2008
at 4:21 pm
I’m all for them rewarding purchasers with additional content, but not for them punishing renters/second-hand purchasers by removing content.
November 10th, 2008
at 4:41 pm
I understand that developers want to protect their money, since shops that rent games are effectively getting people to play the games while the developers are getting exactly zero revenue, but if they choose to tackle the issue like this then they better put on the flame suits.
The best and most logical suggestion I’ve heard so far is to make two copies of each game — one for rent and the other for sale — because if I buy a game, I don’t want to start downloading or activating parts of the game that should be available on the disc as a part of the experience I paid full price for.
November 10th, 2008
at 7:55 pm
How many new copies of older games are there? Do I need to look all over the net or buy from the publisher’s website to enjoy an older game to the fullest? And like Dennis pointed out, what about people that don’t have their systems hooked to the net or can’t afford to? I wonder how realistically some are considering this.
November 10th, 2008
at 10:14 pm
This better not be what Obama meant when he was talking about change.
November 11th, 2008
at 2:05 am
of course, he fails to draw the logical conclusion as to why this is happening in the first place. If you make a game that takes literally 7-8 hours to play(obsessive gamers can usually finish it in a single day) through, with literally no replayability beyond a overly simplistic somewhat slapped on deathmatch multiplayer mode, what do they expect? Especially games for expensive consoles, like PS3, where the demograph is somewhat geared towards games that deliver more of a cinematic experience. If a gamer starts to perceive a video game as more of a narrative story, or movie, then of course, they are going to sell it when they are finished. Aren’t less people buying DVD’s these days? One answer is one that I’ve been pining for for about 5 years which is that games should revolve principally around gameplay, and not around story. This is a primary reason that I don’t particularly care for the Final Fantasy series, it feels more like a choose-your-own-adventure book from the 80’s. We need to see a development shift towards non-linearity and open ended game behavior, coupled with player-driven persistence, where the player can affect and modify large portions of the game should they choose to do so.