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Another reason to hate EA (did you need more?)
Bartimus
Registered User new member
Registered User new member
I am currently over seas for a short stint (working out immigration paperwork for my wife). Anyway I was attempting to purchase warhammer to get a feel for the game. I will be back in the state pretty soon and I didn't want to get to far behind some of my friends. Now try as I might I have not learned Finnish to the extent that someone would need to take care of an entire transaction, let alone do I desire to purchase the game in Euros just because I am on a trip. However the EA.com store is very determined about making sure you are force fed whatever is the preferred language of the IP address you are currently under. It is virtually impossible to make the system believe you want english, even through URL manipulation of the country code. Whats more, may Finnish citizens speak Swedish as their primary language. To top it all off I just tried to open my EA download manager to play a game of 2142 and it popped some warning and then self destructed, and I can't re-download it because of the above mentioned navigational issues. So now I can't even play a game I've already paid for! I hope the people who run this crap burn in some special place in hell.
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This is another reason for you to hate EA, not for us.
Dead Space - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Space_(video_game)
Mirror's Edge - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror%27s_Edge
skate - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skate_(video_game)
skate 2 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skate_2
Command and Conquer for free - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_%26_Conquer_(video_game)
Red Alert for free - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_and_conquer_red_alert
Red Alert 3 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_%26_Conquer:_Red_Alert_3
WAR - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warhammer_online
Battlefield: Bad Company - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlefield_Bad_Company
Boom Blox - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boom_Blox
Burnout Paradise - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burnout_Paradise
Crysis - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crysis
Crysis: Warhead - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crysis_Warhead
Mercenaries 2: World In Flames - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercenaries_2:_World_in_Flames
Rock Band - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Band
Rock Band 2 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Band_2
Spore - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spore_(2008_video_game)
And this is excluding a lot of games.
But yeah, sure, screw them and their crappy games.
Then you're going to be missing out on a lot of good things, I'm sorry to say.
Indeed. How can you not be interested in Dead Space?!
That's a matter of personal taste, isn't it?
I'm no EA hater btw, I bought NHL '09 today.
Ah, I've only just seen Burnout there, now that is good (ie fucking awesome). I have Skate and Mercs 2 as well, neither did much for me.
This right here is your problem. I get games on it for free and I still hate it.
Go to a shop, or use steam/impulse/gamersgate
Ah no worries, I didn't mean it like an attack on you or anything. But yeah, my reason for that list is there's a lot of games that are very good quality, coming from a company that we're meant to hate because they went through an extended period of mediocrity and exploiting their franchises. I accept they may not appeal to everyone, but the likes of Dead Space, Mirror's Edge and skate are not the kinds of games the EA we're meant to be hating would make.
I wasn't until I checked out the GameTrailers preview just now.
Holy shit.
EA has always made good games. I don't think the hate is down to quality, it's more to do with franchisation (I don't think that's a word) of certain titles, and some of the underhanded ways they deal with the competition (ie the exclusive NFL license for Madden etc.).
Welcome to geofencing.
When it comes to marketplaces, geofencing is about preventing folks from downloading/purchasing content not allowed for their region. Now why would a company do that? Most of the time, it's unfortunately a legal requirement.
For example, Gears of War is not allowed in Germany. Gamers there are not allowed to buy it. Well, you might think you could "trick" the system by signing up with a US account and logging into the store and buying it, but unfortunately German laws have dictated that the marketplace needs to prevent this from happening as well. Now this is just one example, but there are plenty others. It is definitely a pain in the ass.
That said, there are a few ways of implementing geofencing and working with locales and internationalization. The way EA.com has done it ... I certainly wouldn't do it that way. But meh, I don't know the context that they're in. There easily could be other issues at work here (or perhaps it is just bad design decisions).
But anyway, hope I helped somewhat.
- Don't add me, I'm at/near the friend limit
Steam: JC_Rooks
Twitter: http://twitter.com/JiunweiC
I work on this: http://www.xbox.com
The CD key determines what servers you can play on. Want to play with your friends in the states? Gotta have a CD key from there.
http://steamcommunity.com/id/Cykstfc
That's probably true in a lot of cases, but more often than not companies use it as an excuse to practise what should be technically illegal price discrimination.
There is no reason beyond sales tax/licensing that digital downloads should cost so much more in the UK than they do in the USA. I can understand localisation costs, but something is wrong with the whole development progress if localising to a few extra languages costs as much as the entire rest of the development. Hell, most games aren't even localised from the USA to the UK.
It is underhanded profiteering to charge more in one country just because you can, and it is something that basically the entire video games industry (except for most steam releases, greenhouse, gamersgate and such) is guilty of.
A lot of Steam releases do that too.
It's not "A lot" is it, more just "quite a few", mostly Activision iirc. (I've not checked recently or anything, I am just going from memory, it's been a while since I bought anything from steam)
So the US economy is doing bad so publishers should be able charge customers more (in dollars) than US residents?
Why?
The last trailer I saw of the game involved a battle with some medium sized monster and it just looked boring. The monster stood still and then charged the player, knocking him over, all the while the player unloaded clip after clip into it with the occasional bionic power thrown in for good measure. Rinse and repeat like 3-4 times before the thing was finally dead. It just didn't look very fun.
A more recent trailer I saw looked a bit better, but it didn't look deserving of the huge amount of hype it's getting. It looks like it might be a halfway decent RE4/Bioshock wannabe, but with RE5 around the corner, I'm having a hard time getting too excited.
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire,
Cars cost more in Canada. As in, a $14,000 car in the US is almost $20,000 after exchange in Canada and the reason is people are paying that. If a company is still making sales charging more, why would they charge less? So long as people in the UK are buying games at retarded prices, prices will continue to be retarded.
Well I guess we can't all have good taste.
I'm probably just jonesing for some good Survival Horror games, and this is right up my alley.
I'd be careful of jumping to conclusions regarding geofencing. I'm not a fan of it (particularly because it's a bitch to implement and test) but there are, unfortunately, legitimate reasons for having it. For example, licensing. One company may own the IP for a product in one region but not another.
If you hate price discrimination across regions ... then hate that. I think it's dangerous to do the following: X is something that you don't like and it's implemented by Y, so therefore you also hate Y. Well, that's ... confusing and can be stretching things. Focus your anger on X.
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Steam: JC_Rooks
Twitter: http://twitter.com/JiunweiC
I work on this: http://www.xbox.com
A couple of decent games and a lot of polish and publicity do not change the pall of mediocrity that hangs over them.
Mirror's Edge actually has promise, but I'm otherwise currently underwhelmed by them. Everything else is just a buffed-up version of things we've already had.
Granted, there are worse companies.
Yeah. EA has decided to cash in on some money-makers now that more non-core gamers are willing to play something outside of Madden. Christ, after Judo the MMA guys are talking about how they're gonna go home and rage people in CoD4. I haven't seen too much change from EA, outside of backing better games.
Depending on your interpretation of the law, and the specifics of the example, it is technically illegal. There are a million and one ways around the law, and businesses are very clever at getting around them, but it is pretty illegal (although it's been a while since I studied this stuff, so I will happilly be corrected).
That's fair.
The thing is, stuff like region coding, locking out IP addresses, and all the policy and tech behind geofencing is what enables price discrimination across regions to happen in the first place. I know they aren't the same thing, but their is a definite link between the two.
Here is one example, which I am sure there is many of:
On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness is on both greenhouse and XBLA. The policy of greenhouse is to never charge different prices to different customers just because of where they live.
Now, if you want to buy it on XBLA it costs 1600 MS points. In the USA that is $13.60, in the UK that is £20, or $36.85. (Prices based on buying points direct from MS, not the cheapest option in the UK, and probably not in the USA, I'm not sure).
How come Greenhouse is able to charge the same price ($19.95) to all customers, no matter where they are, but XBLA for some reason has to charge nearly twice as much?
If I was able to buy points and content from the USA marketplace, this would be a nonissue, just like how I can import DS games, but the geofencing prevents this.
Its a survival horror game, they all look kinda boring without the atmosphere and tension. I think you are doing yourself a great disservice to brush this game off so lightly. To me Dead Space seems a lot more interesting than RE5 and I was a huuuge RE4 fan. (Multiple completions, etc etc)
Let me tell you about Demon's Souls....
Who knows how good football games would be today if Madden actually had competition.
With that being said I don't really like or dislike them.
Resident 8bitdo expert.
Resident hybrid/flap cover expert.
RE4 wasn't survivial horror either.
Even the developers admitted that.
Since their hands-off approach to game publishing I haven't had a problem. Maybe you should phone them and tell them you're experiencing an issue, they would probably be very responsive.
A proxy might work, too, if you're desperate.
I don;t think they're the devil.
I think they're mostly mediocre and uninspired, and have a baffling number of defenders.
I think the latter group is much more annoying than the former.
I don't hate them.
I midly dislike them, and think they get too much attention.
Yeah, but people don't exactly run around complaining about Ubisoft, though Ubisoft pulls the exact same shit that EA does. Really, people you should also complain about Ubisoft, and Atlus, and NIS. But really, if you should complain about anything, it should be Activision suing pirates, something EA spoke out against.
EA may not be your favorite company but there's definitely worse.
To the OP: www.digg.com may be more responsive, they need more reasons to justify pirating Spore.
Not really, we don't hear about that nearly as much.