Isn't Battlefield Heros beginning released for free when if gets out of beta? Did it get out of beta? I stopped playing it after it found it to be just like 5 million other FPSs.

i love the typo in the very first line!!!

You get out of here EA, there is no room for common sense in this business !

Great story, I love reading about companies with CEO's that really have brains. his stance is very logical and not without merit. There was a lot to be said for shareware and to a lesser extent demos. Their major drawback was usually the method in which the labels opted to cripple the software to create the "incentive" to purchase the full version, ie. expirations, reduced funtionality, banners, etc. Those aren't examples of incentives, those are irritations that I believe in large part pushed people to pirate.

So here's a thought... release the game, a fully functional, playable and enjoyable piece of software in its own right. You know, something that leaves the end user actually WANTING MORE, without penalizing said user for not having actually bought a stupid box and disc to clutter up the desk. That way, if they made a good product, people will want to fork over the cash for the game in it's entirety... and if they made a crap game, well, they'll know it was their own fault.

trevorblain Agreed!

I made the mistake of buying Crysis, man that game sucks. Yeah it has nice graphics but game play just sucks.

That's awesome...makes a ton of sense too...I pirated L4D and ended up buying it for multiplayer, same with Crysis. Refreshing to see a CEO in touch with consumers.

If that's how he feels about piracy I will be glad to assist .

Yea maybe the developers release their own 'pirated' version of the game embedded with some kind of bug/malware to get consumers to purchase the real thing I mean like some kinda malware that can won't do to much harm, probably just annoy the user to hell, something the the consumer would know the real game doesn't have, and it's just the torrented version that was infected.

Oh, yeah, sure. That's why they sent a complaint to my ISP which in turn warned me about my download of RA3 : Uprising. I was wondering if it was worth the purchase, so I went ahead and torrented it, as I had no friends who got their hands on it.

But, yeah, it's a smart move, imo. I usually download games before purchasing them. That way I don't spend a single cent of my very limited income on crappy games.

the problem with this strategy is that the day after sims3 was released you could pirate the whole game along with the other town and all the added content as well.

OK, here is an Idea- First, I love steam, It's the best. Buy a game, it automatically downloads, then installs itself, and patches it to the latest ver, then u play. No disc, so no clutter. This is the best distribution service as far as my opinion goes. But, it has a few negatives: 1. not every game is supported. 1. u don't have a disc- so if u have a lot of games, it takes a lot of bandwidth to download them all. 3. still have to pay for games and expansions separately.. So, i've come up with a good idea, and I hope some big company (steam hopefully) steals it and put's it to good use.

Anyways, here is my idea- I think, we need a unity of all the game devs, and destributers,ect. and get them together to support a download program like steam. Then, instead of selling game by game (although u can do that also)have different packages, noob account, middle account, masters account, ect.. And each level gets so many free games a year, (permanent games, not buy and expire). EXAMPLE- I normally buy around 10 games a year, so lets say, I pay a yearly fee of $250 bucks, then, instead of going out and buying all the disc's, I can get 10 free games added onto my game list.

If someone only normally buys 5 games, then they would go in a lower tiered membership. If u buy extra, u have the option to upgrade, or pay full price for a single game.

Here is another idea, so we all aren't wasting bandwidth, At the end of the year, they can send us a masters disc set with all the purchased games on it for the year.

The devs would make money, because people would be buying more games, and people would be happy because they are getting a deal on games, and only have to go to one place to download. This should work kind of like the United Nations or the United Federation of Planetsjust for example, every dev. should be happy, because all there games are being sold in one place, so noone has to create separate websites to push there games, or distribute them.

The program would be almost exactly like steam,with some added requirements, all games should be patched to support xbox 360 controller, this should be a requirement. And, the minimum specs of a game, should be a. all lowest settings minimum fps = 30, recommended specs should be all highest settings minimum fps = 30. The client should have a benchmark tool on the front page.

Oh, one more thing, u should have a 24 hour return policy, if there is no demo available, so if someone doesn't like the game, they can return it.

Anyways, thats my idea. I have many more, cuz im brainstorming right now, so if anyone uses my idea, and needs more, just hit me up. LOL.

I have jacked a few games but if its good I will go buy a copy to support the developers..

This makes me laugh... EA is full of crap.

Last week I lost my disc for Battlefield 2142. "No problem" I thought. I saw an advertisement from EA stating that their Download Manager can now be used to register the games you bought into a library for downloading and no-cd play. Out of ALL the games they have, the games SUPPORTED in that library are about nine. NINE games and Battlefield 2142 is not one of them!!! D:

If they really cared about providing paying customers with service they should address the problem of lost media and cracked/scratched discs or just patch the game so that discs are not required. A replacement disc will cost you $13 plus shipping. A new game will cost you $20...

On the other hand, I still don't like the idea of stripping the game features on disc and replacing them with online features. Imagine playing the game once the servers providing the service are taken down. In every EULA for online games that have come out recently they state something to the effect of: "In no way does (X company) have an obligation to provide online features and at any time they may be removed with or without notice."

That's exactly what we've been seeing in recent times. Its nothing new. Game developers concentrate on the multiplayer more and make the single player such that it leaves you wanting for more. And you end up buying the game for multiplayer. But the second city in Sims 3 has also been pirated..so much for his logic.

EA can SUCK IT!!!!!!! I'm still upset over their cancelation of Motor City Online.

I wonder how long it will take to make them change their minds and say piracy is killing them once again...
oh right, and +1 for dreamphantom_1977

you know its funny, because i was getting ready to pre-order the sims 3, then i read about their "after third install you have to buy a new cd key" bullshit. so i asked ea tech service by email if this was true, and they said yes, even if im reinstalling because of a reformat on my computer, which i do alot because im lazy and would rather do that then work on making it as fast as it used to be before hand. but anyways, so i found this out, and why the f**k am i going to pay $50 probably once a year for the sims 3, and plus another however many $ for all the expansions. this is just bullshit, if they didnt put a limit on how many times you could install the game, then i would have bought it, but instead i pirated it and got the second town from another pirate, and can get my own custom content from mod the sims 3, so take that EA, hopefully more people take this route to screw EA for being such a money hungry corp that they realize this and start helping their once loyal customers instead of draining their pockets.

FFS EA! just copy steam already! its not hard! you can copy your game files any ware, to any computer, any operating system, and you just click the steam exe and it just sorts everything out for you! the only thing you probably need is a net conection when you first fire up steam after moving all the files. and you can't pirate it. valve will just shut down your account if they think shenanigans are about.

so EA, either do that, or don't use any DRM, cause i will not buy any more games where i have to put the disc in to play, or can only activate it a certain number of times! or have to go through some lengthy download process every time i install to get the rest of the game that you decided not to put on the f*@$ing disk!!, in fact, after using steam, i'm sick of games that you need to re-install after reinstalling your OS, i went from XP to win7 64bit with steam on the other drive, i just fired up steam and within a minute i was playing all my games!

Smart move, tell SecuROM to f'off and give us shareware. If you are on the scene long enough you know what's that implies.

The latest EA announcement sounds like a line from like something Stardocks been saying for years.

Know what I like? Warcraft 3.
I just enter my serial on battle.net, and download the game. All is done. Blizzard is slowly learning how to do it. Maybe EA should follow suit.
=)

Maybe EA should have given me a better deal on replacing my BF2 disc...

This does appear to be a smart business move though. Kick all the luddites out of office there. Piracy is not going away anytime soon, so learn to profit from it.

Pirates are customers so you can't simply block them off, it would actually make sales worse.

Lazie Farie Capitalism FTW!

You can download all the add on content as well...

Great Brainstorming dreamphantom_1977, i support those ideas- well done.
dreamphantom_1977 email all the companies you think applicable maybe youll get a great job earn heaps but doing F all.

Great Brainstorming dreamphantom_1977, i support those ideas- well done.
dreamphantom_1977 email all the companies you think applicable maybe you'll get a great job earn heaps but doing F all or at the very least getting paid for something you enjoy.

change the old and greedy executives in the music industry...they just can't accept the times had change and they can't stop it.
jeez, they're equating each download to a lost sale.

Oh boy, I was looking for a reason to stop buying EA games and this is finally it. Selling (and yes I buy them) incomplete games is BS I am not gonna pay for that. If the entire gaming industry goes this way I will stop playing new games completely. I do have a decent collection of games I don't mind playing over and over.

What a load of BS. You can easily find the second city and all other official objects for the sims 3 online. I only buy games on Steam, that's where EA should go.

LOL! Finally someone came up with a good idea to make pirating both legal and yet still profitable. xD