Comment by seekely | Hacker News Reader

Comment by seekely | Hacker News Reader

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The hostility against these decisions always frustrates me. The market will sort this out, and I'm pretty sure despite all the moaning, it will fall in EA's favor. You can't expect EA or any game publisher to just give their product away.

EA is a business and needs to make money in order to sustain making AAA titles. Nowadays, there are hundreds of people working their hearts out to deliver each title. These people would like to get paid. Gamestop does not pay their salaries. EA does. Every time somebody gives $55 to Gamestop instead of $60 to EA, an hour or two of somebody's work is potentially taken at a loss to EA.

Budgets of games are not going to go down. Gamers wouldn't go for the drop in quality. The used market is not going to go away. It's perfectly rational for gamers to try and make a buck. But this puts EA in quite the quandary.

Rewarding gamers for purchasing the game new is rational and fair. Not evil. EA will make money and the gamer will continue to get well made games. Just because a feature or part of the game was once 'free' doesn't justify it always being 'free'. The market is allowed to correct itself.

Noone is expecting them to give it away, stop putting up straw-men. This is the problem:

One person buying the game and playing it for a year: EA revenue: X$ EA cost for development and infrastructure per game: Y$

One person buying the game, playing for half a year, someone else buying it used, playing for half a year: EA revenue: X+10$ EA cost: Y$

If X > Y as we suspect, then this is a naked cash grab. Those tend to be very unpopular. If X < Y, then the move gets more understandable, but they really should think about changing their business model so they can charge for the online experience separately.

The used game market is money left on the table from the perspective of EA. A company should not leave money on the table if it makes fiscal sense to grab it.

EA was probably 'comfortable' with the used game market as long as they were rolling in cash because new game sales were profitable enough to compensate for the used game market and piracy.

However, as budgets increase and margins tighten, EA can no longer just look the other way. EA is hurting and many times X works out to be less than Y.

You suggest they change their business model. That's exactly what they have done. Reward gamers for purchasing the game new while not increasing the price of the game at retail while punishing the used game market which does not fiscally support EA.

The tone and popularity of this sort of reply really bothers me. The grandparent is the best explanation of the actual business decision in the entire thread. How was any of it "straw man"?

Trying to get paid for your product when someone uses it isn't any more of a "cash grab" than any other company selling any other product for money. In other industries when a maker sees no share of the sale of his work, we usually find a way to call what happened to him what it is: theft.

If EULAs were enforced, the situation would be different since the "non transferable license" would maybe kill the commercial used games market.

The way it's marketed, and has been for a long while, is that they're selling only one product: The Game, and possession of The Game entitles you to use their online servers.

With this move, they're trying to split it up into two products: The Game, and Online Access, but they don't make the distinction when you buy the game new, only when you buy it used. This borders on violating the first sale doctrine, because the product becomes crippled or partly used-up when you purchase it, for no good reason.

I can understand EA perfectly, they wish very strongly that they were in the business of selling services on a per-month basis, but they are in the commodities business where they sell stuff, and their rights to dictate what can and can't be done with said stuff expires when it's sold.

There are a few companies (Autodesk?) that try to maintain that their commercial software licenses are non-transferable, but they usually get told to stuff it when they try to stop people from buying old licenses. I am slightly worried and curious as to why you seem to think that non-transferable commercial licenses are a good idea?

Non-transferable licenses are a great idea because makers should get paid for their work.

It's unfortunate the courts have ruled against this when the delivery medium (the disk) is sold on a store shelf. It's like making a movie theater let patrons resell their tickets to be used for a later show.

I expect the eventual result is that everyone will move their content online. See the rise of Steam, XBLA, and soon services like OnLive.

But they did get paid, someone bought the original license!

The GPP sets up a strawman argument by saying that people are expecting EA to give their product away for free. No one is expecting that at all.

To address your point, they are getting paid when someone buys and uses their product. Currently the $60 price tag includes usage of the game servers for a single person. If that person sells the game why should the new owner have to pay an additional cost? The old user is no longer using the servers and as far as EA is concerned their cost didn't change.

In other industries it's theft? I've never bought a new car so all the used cars I've bought have been theft? What about used cars that still had original warranties intact? Should I be forced to buy a new warranty since I wasn't the original person who purchased it, even though it's tied to the car?

I don't think it's theft at all. It's perfectly rational for a gamer to buy and sell used games. But it's also perfectly rational for EA to try to make as much money as possible from the used game market which completely undermines its business.

I suspect the used car market is also a thorn in the side of auto manufactures. They probably carry higher prices at retail to compensate for the used market as much as possible (assumption). That works for them.

EA could do the same thing and raise the prices of its games to $80-$100. However, they have options. EA would rather shift the cost from 'good' gamers buying new games and go after 'bad' gamers buying from the used market who are only indirectly customers.

Why is this wrong? In the end, somebody has to pay for what EA produces.

In the end, somebody has to pay for what EA produces.

What? Absolutely not! EA are free to offer their products at whatever price point they see fit in an attempt to recover their costs for producing their product, as long as they do so within the applicable consumer protection laws. And people are free to accept their offer and purchase their product. Sometimes they succeed. Sometimes they don't.

Ha, we're on the same page. I meant the line in a 'if EA wishes to stay in business, they will have to recoup their costs from their customers' way.

EA is selling one ticket for a ride in a car, not the car itself.

Just because courts have ruled that the ticket coming on a disk means you can resell the disk, doesn't mean EA has no right to find a way to tear the ticket.

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