NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Electronic Arts shook up the video gaming field last week with a major price change: Star Wars: The Old Republic, one of the most ambitious and expensive multiplayer games ever made, would soon drop its subscription fees.
The move essentially marks the end of the traditional business model for "massively multiplayer" online games, better known as MMOs. Almost every major publisher has now given in and eliminated its monthly fees -- the genre's bread-and-butter business model for the past 15 years -- relying instead on sales of premium content or virtual items to make money.
There are no thoughtful ads in Video Games, EA. Leave them be.
I think the only type of games that can gets away with it would be sport games, having those sponsors ads on the side like on real life.
But don't put freaking Doritos ads in Star Wars or something, it breaks the immersion. If it is a pop-up ads, then big no.
EA coming back for the crown of being perceived as the worst company in gaming.
One of my favorite series is the THPS franchise, and it was packed with ads, but it didn't bother me. Posters for skateboard companies, JEEP, and Nokia phones. It did sort of fit in with the game world, but that was the past, these days ad would be intentionally intrusive or unskippable loading screen type of imagery. Ugh, I know EA would do it in a horrible fashion. Screw them.
EA senior staff has been investigated for sexual misconduct involving female coworkers, and these said people have been named publicly.
Aye just call Phil, i mean he somehow made Bobby Kotick's scandal disappear and gave him a few million dollar high five on the way out.
Microsoft did, Phil Spencer played a minor part. He instigated the buyout that led to Kotick escaping all his controversies while getting a golden handshake.
Someone on Twitter calculated that the people hired in Tango and Arkane Austin could get a decent salary for roughly 17 years for the money Kotick was paid.
Yeah some thing tells me Kotics $ was already guaranteed before MS made the deal. As for the studios... Let's be honest here... none of those studios made system sellers.
EA about to go down like Activision and then Phil saves the day saying.this is good for the industry and consolidation will help create competition. /s.
Then they shutdown Codemasters and studio behind Jedi Survivor.
Atleast they could hardly do much damage that EA hadn't allready done. EA has shut down most of their studios by now.
What's up with all these horny creeps. You gon be horny, fine. Just not at work take care of that shit before you go in. Rub one out if you have to. Don't be a creep at all. ESPECIALLY at work. But don't be one AT ALL.
You think deviants care where they are? Work sometimes makes it an even better situation for them because they can abuse their power.
"it seems that according to EA, given the events transpired outside of work between two adults, and the fact that once investigation has started that the alleged perpetrators didn’t do it again, the investigation is considered closed. [...] The victim still has to work with the people that harassed her."
Yep, EA is disgusting.
I mean the fact stuff happened outside of work puts EA in quite a difficult position legally. These women don't seem to have reported the matter to the police which kinda ties EA's hands on what they can do. If they don't file reports of the crimes then yeah from EA's perspective it is stuff that happened outside of work. The only exception is the guy that apparently referenced things in the slack channel for work, spending on what he said proving it may be very hard and he may well be able to get away with plausible deniability. I don't like EA and I think these people need to be dismissed but without any legal action being taken, EA can't really do much without risk of being sued themselves for unfair dismissal etc.
EA has announced it will engage in a shareholder-pleasing share buyback program just a couple of months after mass layoffs at the studio.
Square Enix needs to drop its subscription too for both Dragon Quest X and Final Fantasy XIV. I play by my own time.
Because Pay-to-win models make a crap ton of money. Might as well make extra money with people buying the game and subscribing for a while, then go make bank and pure profit off pay-to-win fee's, I mean free-to-play models.....
It really wasn't a surprise to most gamers that follow the mmo market. Also F2P is not the same as pay to win and whoever says that doesn't know crap.
I like paying for content so much more than paying per month, when I pay $15 for a month of MMO I feel like I should only play that game in the month, and I just hate that, I have other games I want to play.
Ugh, good thing I didn't bother with the game. There is a distinct lack of quality wen comparing games that are "Free to Play" and monthly subscription.
Yes, it sounds great in theory, and I can see why publishers love it. But the truth is, most cases, games become less supported and content ends becoming "Pay to Win"
It suits shallow, casual, pop in and go MMOs, which, is actually the entire market right now... Can't wait for a deep, content heavy MMO to come out again.