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"Steam sales cheapen intellectual property" says EA Origin boss
- Thread starter Sentenza
- Start date
Mama Robotnik
Member
COMPETITOR SELLING CHEAPER THAN US IS BAD FOR THE INDUSTRY
morningbus
Serious Sam is a wicked gahbidge series for chowdaheads.
"Sales benefit consumers. I just can't have that."
Agreed here, except I don't bother picking up their games when the price collapses.
Agreed here, except I don't bother picking up their games when the price collapses.
I usually dont buy games day 1 anymore because I know it'll be half price a couple months down the line (and because my backlog is huge as it is and I dont have much time to game as it is).
Surprisingly good interview with seemingly honest responses
Fixed1979
Member
No one is going to disagree with the statement that people wait for Steam sales on a lot of their purchases. Whether or not that hurts or helps the devs/pubs bottom line is another question... arguments for and against can go either way depending on countless factors so it's hard to say. I would think that if it didn't work out well for everyone we wouldn't see so many deep discounts, that is unless Steam are forcing the pubs hand, but I don't think we've seen any evidence of that happening.
As far as cheapening the product, I mean I can see an argument for it but I'll disagree with the statement. A lot of $59 games I buy for $15 can still feel like $59 games (as long as their quality titles).
toastyToast
Member
I could just not buy anything
A sale is a sale, people crack at different points
A sale is a sale, people crack at different points
Steam sales are great but I'll buy games full price if I a) think the game is amazing/been waiting months for it or b) want to support the developer for bringing the game to PC/encourage them to bring the rest of the catalogue to steam (see Famicom via XSEED). If anything steam sales make me spend more money than I otherwise would, for better or for worse it keeps the shelf life of countless old titles fresh and appealing.
Confidence Man
Member
If that were true he'd have to have evidence of declining sales of new releases on Steam, which I'm sure he doesn't. I'd bet sales of new releases are growing steadily, rather.
Yeah pretty much. These are the same bitter whiny tears GoG had a few months ago. All because these two can't compete with Steam. One of them because they don't have the power to match the sales and the other because everyone on Earth hates them.
Gully State
Member
Coming from a company that continually devalues their products by sprinkling pieces of shit on their developers' games ...that's hilarious..
Most of the top selling games on Steam right now are full-priced games, and some of them (like Skyrim) have been there for months. If someone is selling something that people want, then gamers will be there to pay that price. And then more gamers will be there when it gets a price cut. And then even more after the next price cut/sale, and so on. I'm failing to see how Steam sales are cheapening IP any more than pre-owned has done for the last two decades. And at least developers and publishers are getting a cut from Steam sales, thus increasing the product's sales tail.
All the sales-related discussion of this interview reeks of is EA throwing its toys out of the pram when they realised that digital distribution didn't mean games could be priced at £40/$60 forever.
All the sales-related discussion of this interview reeks of is EA throwing its toys out of the pram when they realised that digital distribution didn't mean games could be priced at £40/$60 forever.
Yup. I've spent more on games thanks to Steam, even it means it's less per game.
PSN+. Netflix. Take your pick. Here's the money shot buried in the article:
Without revealing too much, what I'll say is one way to deal with aging inventory is you do deep discounts like that. There are other ways, which I can't really talk about, of dealing with product as it ages over a period of time, where you present a value to the customer and you engage them in your service on a going-forward basis. We don't believe in the drop-it-down, spring-it-up, 75 percent off approach, but we've got something else that we do believe in that we'll be rolling out.
It's impossible not to think subscription service when reading that answer.
Valve realizes that their customers matter more than fellow publishers. Giving customers these steams sales brings in more business and keeps people on Steam. This is far more important imo.
Chances are if you are REALLY interested in a game, you won't wait for a steam sale. If you're moderately or less interested, you'll wait. At least that is how I am. Everyone tries to find the right value for every title they buy, and Steam is more open to options on their prices. It also gives many game communities a bit of a resurgence in activity and interest in the title.
Its far more beneficial for everyone. So many games come out these days that garner everyone's attention for a month and then disappear. Having weekend sales months later just renew interest in a title many may have forgotten about and give a little life into online communities.
An IP should be worth its price of admission, and if people feel its not, they'll wait till its cheaper - there are few games that are worth full price and giving discounts just gets more people to play it and potentially enjoy the IP with the possibility of buying a sequel, etc.
Chances are if you are REALLY interested in a game, you won't wait for a steam sale. If you're moderately or less interested, you'll wait. At least that is how I am. Everyone tries to find the right value for every title they buy, and Steam is more open to options on their prices. It also gives many game communities a bit of a resurgence in activity and interest in the title.
Its far more beneficial for everyone. So many games come out these days that garner everyone's attention for a month and then disappear. Having weekend sales months later just renew interest in a title many may have forgotten about and give a little life into online communities.
An IP should be worth its price of admission, and if people feel its not, they'll wait till its cheaper - there are few games that are worth full price and giving discounts just gets more people to play it and potentially enjoy the IP with the possibility of buying a sequel, etc.
"Steam sales cheapen intellectual property" says EA Origin boss
Not a better fitting image possible.
Glass Rebel
Member
There's a huge amount of games out there and my time and money are limited so I only buy a handful of fullprice "AAA" titles. If you want me to spend 50€ on your game you gotta make sure it's exactly what I want, if not, don't cry about me waiting for your game to hit a lower price.
Yeah plenty of games do well on Steam right away. Deus Ex Human Revolution was setting single player records on Steam last year and then Skyrim followed it by completely shattering every record Steam had.
Those poor games suffered so badly because clearly everyone was waiting for the sales 5 months later.
The best part is that there are so many good games available these days that waiting is a non-issue if you're not emotionally or socially invested in playing the latest and greatest.
More Fun To Compute
Member
Retailers shouldn't be able to discount physical copies of EA's shitty games either because it damages the value of their shitty IPs. It's like the equivalent of arson and should be illegal.
BriareosGAF
Member
There's an important point in here. It's not just the price, it's that you can get *still get it* a year from now. With retail shelf space dynamics that wasn't always the case before, outside the sometimes-fickle used market.
BlazingDarkness
Member
AAA games fail to retain their value outside of Steam, it's just the nature of the market.
At least Steam encourages sustained lifetime sales by promoting the games in future sales and whatnot.
Wanting things cheap is human nature. The idea of a "full price" game is nonsense in this day and age of paid dlc, expansions, hats, f2p, etc etc.
I would love if more developers/publishers would speak out more in terms of revenue when their games go on sale.
Stallion Free
Cock Encumbered
I still feel burned for purchasing Dead Space 2 for 60$ day 1 when it was like MSRP 30$ 3 months later and hitting sale prices for 15$.
It's like there's this strange disconnect between the guy in charge of Origin, and the guy in charge of sales/marketing who works with Steam to put the games that are on Steam store on deep discount. I'm getting sick of seeing Dead Space, Bulletstorm, etc on Daily Deal every other month. I don't want them / I have them already!
There also seems to be a disconnect between the people running GoG, and the people who integrated Steam into the version of Witcher sold on the Steam store and praises Valve for adding value through Steamworks.
There also seems to be a disconnect between the people running GoG, and the people who integrated Steam into the version of Witcher sold on the Steam store and praises Valve for adding value through Steamworks.
I H8 Memes
Member
This is a great interview for all of the people who say that they want to see Origin and GFWL succeed because Steam needs competition. Here is EA, who btw were making a hell of a lot more profit through Steam then they ever could through retail, with their own DD service. And how much do they sell new games for on this service? A service that now makes them even more money than Steam. $60. $60 fucking dollars on a service that now allows them to keep 100% of the profits. 60 fucking dollars. This is who the suckers want so that "Steam has competition".
Steam has no competition now. Do you see them abusing that and charging 60 dollars for their own games that you cant get anywhere else?
I'm sorry, but anybody begging for a publicly owned, publicly traded company to gain enough market share to threaten Steam is a sucker. There are only 2 things that matter to a publicly owned company and those are profit and growth. You are nothing more than an ATM for them to create new reasons to withdraw money from. $5 here and $10 there another $2 for something else adds up when you are taking it from enough suckers.
Never trust EA.
Steam has no competition now. Do you see them abusing that and charging 60 dollars for their own games that you cant get anywhere else?
I'm sorry, but anybody begging for a publicly owned, publicly traded company to gain enough market share to threaten Steam is a sucker. There are only 2 things that matter to a publicly owned company and those are profit and growth. You are nothing more than an ATM for them to create new reasons to withdraw money from. $5 here and $10 there another $2 for something else adds up when you are taking it from enough suckers.
Never trust EA.
EternalGamer
Banned
That argument applies to most consumer goods:
-Clothes/End of Season Close Outs
-Model year Cars/End of Year Sales
-Going to Movies/Renting from Redbox
-Console Released Games/Greatest Hits
-High Speed Internet/Slower that Gets there Eventually
And yet plenty of people still pay for the former.
EA is clearly wrong. IOS has proven this business model. Sell a game for $.99 and get it to the top of the charts, generate interest, profit.
One of the best selling games on Steam in the last month has been Arm 2 at $30 for a game over a year old. Max Payne 3 and Skyrim also did extremely well.
This argument is completely bogus.
EA and GOG be jealous
Here is the thing, people focus on the sales of Steam and ignore how long some games stay at full price or near full price.
Games with a lot of value stay at full price just as long as at retail. Sure, it is not most games, but good games like CoD or Elder Scrolls stick around at high price points for at least half a year. And they consistently are in the top 10 sales list.
Besides that, steam cannot force publishers to discount their games. Publishers choose to discount games. Basically the discounts are a win-win-win. The publishers sees revenue go up with no hit to costs, steam sees revenue go up, and consumers get the games for cheap.
Good on origin though for offering free distribution to crowd sourced games.
Back to my original point, steam to me is how a free market in games would behave in the absence of price controls. High demand games do not see price drops, where games with less demand milk first adopters and then drop in price quickly to a place where they maximize revenue.
Games with a lot of value stay at full price just as long as at retail. Sure, it is not most games, but good games like CoD or Elder Scrolls stick around at high price points for at least half a year. And they consistently are in the top 10 sales list.
Besides that, steam cannot force publishers to discount their games. Publishers choose to discount games. Basically the discounts are a win-win-win. The publishers sees revenue go up with no hit to costs, steam sees revenue go up, and consumers get the games for cheap.
Good on origin though for offering free distribution to crowd sourced games.
Back to my original point, steam to me is how a free market in games would behave in the absence of price controls. High demand games do not see price drops, where games with less demand milk first adopters and then drop in price quickly to a place where they maximize revenue.
Dark Octave
Banned
Just like how games sold through portals like Big Fish lowered the average price of a game from $20 to $10 after following Xbox's lead with Live Arcade, effectivley starting the race to the bottom. Before you know it, you had $6 games and then the great idea to allow unlimited play for all titles in through subscription came to fruition. After that, I became so disgusted, I quit paying attention to that side of the industry.
I paid 48 dollars for it. It came with the Limited Edition BF 3, but that was garbage bin fodder. Wish I'd waited for a better deal too.
This doesn't work.
I absolutely agree with him that aggressively deep discounts on Steam and Amazon have devalued games, at least for me. Even when a game is pretty cheap Day 1 (say $10 for an Indie title I am interested in), I find myself thinking "If I buy this game now for $10, it will probably be on sale for $2.50-$5, or included in some Indie Bundle before I even have a chance to play it". Torchlight, Orcs Must Die, Super Meat Boy, Dungeon Defenders, and several other high profile indie games were offered on sale for 75% off within 3 months of launch. Some of those were 75% off in the first 6 weeks. Why pay full price for anything?
With games like Arkham City and other games that I know will be discounted quickly and aggressively I won't pay full price. He's actually right about this, but it doesn't change the fact that the developers still make their money when they sell shitloads of units at a lower price.
Stallion Free
Cock Encumbered
Ice cold.
More Fun To Compute
Member
Nobody does a better job of cheapening EA IP than EA marketing anyway.
Rocket Scientist
Member
Steam sales have made me double dip and buy games I never ended up playing countless times just to have them available whenever I want wherever I want. And I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one. Lot of free money for developers at sales I think.
The 75% off is a clear exagerating, usually 4~5 months will give you 25~50% off at best.
Plus this is also valid for games sold at retail, waiting 4~5 months in retail will give you similar discounts, this is especially true for EA games, yet I don't see him talking about that.
Plus as it's been mentioned already, Steam does not discount games without the publishers aproval, if a publisher or developer is worried about the value of their IP they can simply not put the game on sale. Yet they do because they realize that sales will bring more money than having the game full price in the long term.
EternalGamer
Banned
This is a good point. There is no "gate keeper" on Steam like there is on consoles or other pricing services. Steam is the closest thing to true open market where platform holders/retail outlets don't get in on price control.
For every cheapskate there are 3,35 first adopters that buy the game day one. True numbers that I pulled from my own renowned source. If it weren't for aggressive sales this industry would be in a far worse state. Next thing we know some "luminaries" will start comparing people that only buy games in sales to pirates that don't deserve the full game and need to buy an online pass.
YianGaruga
Banned
EA'S free-to-play games will be anything but free.
He is not right, valuable brands do not price drop. Steam simply accurately prices the value of the IP. Surprise, most IPs are not worth $60. The ones that are though, stay at that price for a long time.
Publishers wish all their brands were worth $60, but the consumer quite clearly only sees a few games in that category.
Complistic
Member
I say this a lot. And the only reason I'm buying them at all is because of steam sales. If they didn't go cheaper I wouldn't waste my money on them.
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