Why Can't I Buy the Game I Want to Play?

I spoke up a lot on this blog with regards to why I don't want to support certain games. It could be a certain form of DRM, or some monetization issue, or a piece of pre-order bonus. Why is this an issue to us gamers? Shouldn't we be thankful to the developers for making such great games for us? Shouldn't we cut them some slack and give them the money they deserve?

Actually, it is understandable when companies choose to use DRM like always-online requirements to fight piracy. Piracy is a problem, and it does eat into sales, and in truth, having a game connect to a server and having parts of the game run server side is a very powerful form of DRM that can be almost impossible to crack, unless the pirates manage to duplicate the server's role somehow. Whether or not having DRM will get people, who would otherwise download the game to actually pay for the game is another matter (there's no reason to believe they would still want the game if it's not free), but we can understand where game developers are coming from. The problem with always-online is obvious, server issues, internet provider issues, companies closing down, or shutting down servers; the fact is, technology is just not good enough yet, whether it's the game company or internet providers. And in many countries, internet is limited by data caps, and subscription is not cheap. Perhaps one day, when speeds can finally be fast and internet, reliable, and accessible anywhere and anytime without latency issues and wiring requirement, perhaps then, can we accept always-online. Now, however, it is just not acceptable, though we tend to be more forgiving if it's free-to-play.

Other issues like pre-order bonus and DLCs are just there to encourage sales, which technically isn't wrong. But it opens up abuse. Pre-order bonuses are content created before the game is released, meaning potentially, it could be something originally in the game, something purposely removed from the game just before release to, 1) encourage people to buy before reviews are out, i.e. trick people into buying a bad game, and 2) get people who didn't order the game to fork out more money for content that should be in there originally, effectively increase the price of the game by $5 to $15. Not a bad deal for the company at all.

These are things gamers don't want, and yet, we still buy games that have all these issues. The message we are sending to companies is that we don't mind their exploitation, as long as we get good games. They can inconvenience us however they want with DRM; they can sell us five minutes of content at a time for $15 dollars each; they can make crappy games full of bugs, log in issues and with server issues and we'll pay for them without waiting for reviews. They can do all these, and we won't mind. If we keep sending out these signals, companies will keep testing the waters, keep exploiting us more and more, trying to see how far they can go before we react, and they will do it with games that people really want to play.

I'm not sure if it's worth fighting anymore. Perhaps gamers don't really care, and people who are complaining are just the vocal minority. Or people are really just stupid fan boys, complaining about every little misstep EA makes but worshipping at the feet of Blizzard that does no wrong. You know, both Sim City and Diablo 3 use server processing always-online DRM but only one of the companies finally made their game playable offline.

Blizzard's Shift into Anti-Consumer Policies

Reaper of Souls has pre-order bonuses. And always-online DRM. And it almost has micro-transactions and pay-to-win elements. Almost.

How long will it be before we get into expensive, overpriced DLCs? And in-game content purposely removed from the finished product as pre-order bonuses or DLC? Or pay-to-enter betas?

I ranted about pre-order bonuses before. They encourage people to buy games before knowing if it will be any good. Granted, Blizzard is only giving out cosmetic items as pre-order incentives, but with regards to the Demon Hunter, not enough is known about Heroes of the Storm so it leaves to be seen if it will be an issue.

I guess I'm just sore because I've made it a point not to pre-order, and to not buy anything that has always-online at full price, and because I'm a collector, since I won't be getting the full package when I don't pre-order, it means I won't buy it in future even if there is a sale. (Yes, there are sales on the Blizzard store - Christmas and Black Friday.) AND because it crosses over to other Blizzard games, and I won't be able to complete my 'collection', I'll be giving up on collector's editions, digital deluxe editions or what not. Yes, I know I'm dumb for collecting games, but thanks to Blizzard, I won't have any IP that I'm devoted to anymore, so I can save my money.

The Aliens: Colonial Marines incident should have been a wake up call against pre-ordering games, and really, since it's on the online store, there is no need for Blizzard to get the numbers so they can stock up on copies. What reason is there but to bait people into making rash purchases? What annoys me is that because it is Blizzard, they can get away with absolute anything. If it were EA, the internet would have exploded in a rage equivalent to the detonation of a million nuclear warheads.

Edit: My bad. Turns out Blizzard actually announced that the 'pre-order loot' will be available till 31st March, i.e. after the launch so people can actually wait for reviews before purchasing, instead of buying blind. But then again, people thought Diablo 3 was good for the first few hours...

PC = Pirate Cove but a Win For Gamers?

Ubisoft's CEO Yves Guillemot stated that the percentage of people pirating on the PC is 93 to 95%,(Guillemot: As many PC players pay for F2P as boxed product) the same as the number of people who do not pay when playing a free-to-play game. I'm not sure where they get their stats from, but with their always-online-DRM, I'm not surprised if people do end up pirating their games just so they can play it without issues, and even those who bought the games might end up pirating or cracking them, so the number of pirates gets inflated. Perhaps they realized this themselves, because an article surfaced today with they stating their DRM have been scrapped since June 2011 and replaced with a one-time online activation (Ubisoft Scrapping Always-On DRM For PC Games). Are they eating their words and crawling back to PC gamers?

Is this a win for gamers? Without the online DRM, I just might start buying their games again. But if publishers continue to blame poor PC sales on piracy instead of acknowledging that they have been bringing really poor and unplayable ports over to PCs, they are just going to turn away the PC crowd. For too many times have great games on consoles been poorly ported over to the PC, so much so that PC gamers may just start to thinking that developers have no interest in the PC market, and if that is so, there will be less and less people willing to pay for PC games. Perhaps things aren't that grim, but I would hate to see things go into that vicious cycle...

Why I'm going to actively boycott publishers/developers

This more of a personal rant than anything objective.

I've been careful to not buy games that have always-on DRM as a form of protest against this particular form of 'punishment to legitimate gamers'. Ever since I learnt of the DRM for Assasin's Creed 2 (I think), I've stopped buying Ubisoft games at full price for PC, but probably only got 1 for the Wii. I bought Command and Conquer 4 from EA, not realizing that it had the same DRM and have since been weary of buying their games. I gave Blizzard a chance because I have always liked their games even though I was upset with Diablo 3's required online access and also the Real Money Auction House. I bought Capcom's fighting games for the PS3 even though I know they had a habit of making new versions and selling them as a new game instead of providing it as DLC for the older version. Even for some of the games I boycotted, I still ended up buying it at a Steam sale or when they finally removed the offending portions of the game.

What I'm starting to realize is that you can't have your cake and eat it (duh). Partial boycott doesn't help matters. Publishers will keep putting out such crap until gamers put their foot down and hit them in their wallets. I understand that what one person does is not going to do much, but I believe more and more gamers and fighting back against publishers. Bioware changing their ending and Capcom saying they'll change their stand on on-disk-dlc shows that gamers do have the power if they stand together (though I think Capcom will still make content and then not put it on the disk, but rather make people pay for it later so I don't believe them at all).

So I'm going to totally boycott games made by EA, Ubisoft, Blizzard and Capcom, and mind you, I have games from EA, Activision, Blizzard and Capcom that I really love. I would really love to continue following the story and playing the games (Starcraft, Warcraft and Diablo series) made by Blizzard, the various great games published by EA like Dead Space, and Capcom's fighting games and Resident Evil series (I love my survival horror if you haven't noticed, but those games are dying, being replaced by 'action-horror'), so this is really a painful choice for me. But it has to be done, and anyway, there will be people streaming if I'm really interested in the story. I am still interested in gaming though, and will look towards independent developers and other publishers like Paradox, THQ, CD Projekt and the like.