Posts Tagged ‘ripoffs’

Treating consumers with contempt costs you

Saturday, July 17th, 2010

Three quick notes for publishers from the your-dickheadetry-will-cost-you file:

  • New strategy game RUSE is free to try this weekend on Steam, as a method of building interest in the title. Unfortunately, the full game remains Ubi-crippled with Ubisoft’s gamer-hating “log you off if the connection is lost in the middle of a single-player game” DRM (even if you’re running it through Steam) so, I have absolutely no idea whether the full game is any good or not because I’m not going to bother downloading even a trial of it. (And I’m not alone.)

  • I was going to give new comedy RPG DeathSpank a go, and went to download it on 360 before realising that there’s no way it’ll fit on my crowded 20GB hard drive. Naturally, I have thus far resisted paying Microsoft’s frankly obscene prices for a drive upgrade, and will thus be downloading the demo and possibly buying the game on PS3, where Sony will get the sweet sweet cash and not Microsoft.
  • Would’ve bought the PC version of Battlefield Bad Company 2 on the recent Steam sale, if Australians weren’t being forced to pay 40% more than every other country. Well done, EA and local distributors – you’ve done yourselves out of another sale. Likewise 2K with its even more obscene 270% markup on the PC version of Borderlands.

I’m just one man, slowly making up for his weakness in buying the MW2 map packs.

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Sick of Australian distributors

Monday, June 21st, 2010

Okay, look, I’m still not over the Steam ripoff thing. (Although, with a cousin in London, I did find a way around it for long enough to buy L4D2.) In addition to Civ 5 (50 USD vs 80 USD) there have been a series of sales this week for EA titles which have (ignoring the ridiculousness of additional publisher-based DRM in a Steam title) been spectacularly offensive.

Take Sunday’s sale of Dragon Age: Origins. The 40% off “discount” price in Australia is 40% off the frankly absurd 70 USD so it’s 46.89 USD. Hardly a bargain. The standard, non-sale US price is 39.99 USD, so our “40% off” price is still significantly more than the US standard price – let alone the UK sale price of 13.39 pounds, which works out at 19.82 USD, somewhat less than HALF the Australian “discount” price.

For a digital download that is in all respects identical.

I get that publishers have to add GST to games sold in Australia, but the 10% GST is 10% – considerably less than 110%, being ten percent and not one hundred and ten percent. It’s not much of an excuse for the markups they’re imposing, is my point.

And that’s not even the worst example – according to the steamprices.com top ripoffs page, Steam charges USD 20 for Red Faction Guerilla in the US, but to those stuck behind an Australian IP it charges USD… prepare yourself… are you sitting comfortably? Good, then I will continue… USD 70. (That probably needs to be in a bigger font.) Yup, a markup of 350%. I mean, you’ve almost got to admire the sheer gall of THQ, don’t you? That kind of ripoff is a thing of such spectacular shamelessness that it’s almost thrilling. I’m not going to buy their game, but I might come back and admire its monstrous pricing structure next time I need an emotional shock.

Also, unbelievable regional pricing aside, there’s the issue of the ever more stupid delays in game releases here, highlighted by – who else – Nintendo Australia’s treatment of its flagship titles. Like Super Mario Galaxy 2, which won’t be out here till July. Despite having been released overseas a month ago.

My question is: what the hell is the point of Australian distributors, and why wouldn’t we all be better off if they just disappeared and the big retailers imported directly from overseas?

Feel free to share the examples of us being ripped off and screwed over that have really gotten your metaphorical goat.

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Steam region ripoff

Sunday, May 9th, 2010

Now I have a nifty PC that can run modern games, I’ve been exploring the convenience of the Steam store – PC games that’ll run without having to download a nodvd crack and disable your ability to play them online.

Only I’m in Australia, which means Steam insists on making me pay a penalty for many titles. Take Civilization 5, now taking preorders – they want $US80-90 from us (in US currency, bizarrely), where if they don’t manage to automatically detect your location and think you’re in the US the price is $US50-60. That’s right, we’re paying almost double for NOTHING. They don’t ship anything here, they don’t have any increased costs, the Australian distributor is not involved – so what the hell is the justification for robbing us blind? They’re even charging MORE than in the shops, for less – no packaging, no distribution, no middle men costs, but prices at retail level Australian dollar figures with the currency changed to the more expensive US dollars.

And whether we just blame the publishers for being discriminatory parasites, or assign some blame to Valve for giving them the tools to do it, the situation is both offensive and absurd.

Do they REALLY think we’re going to cop it? Do they REALLY think we’re going to pay double for no reason? Do they REALLY think that people who are considering handing over money are going to just bend over and take being ripped off so outrageously? There’s a reason Australia is known for high levels of piracy, and THIS SORT OF GARBAGE IS IT.

Screw you, Steam. Screw you, Valve. Most importantly – Screw you, publishers. If you’re going to treat your paying customers like this you deserve to lose sales to piracy.

If you have an IP product and you

  • refuse to sell it to people in certain countries;

  • refuse to sell it for particular periods;
  • refuse to sell it in particular formats;
  • insist on adding anti-consumer garbage like DRM that limits paying customers’ access to the content for which they’ve paid;
  • charge some customers more than others;
  • charge unreasonable amounts for content

…Then you do not deserve the protection of OUR courts, OUR governments. IP is not an intrinsic natural law, it’s something we the public grant you in order to encourage you to create. If you’re not going to live up to your end of the bargain, and enable us to access those created works reasonably, then why should we live up to ours? Why should we send the police we pay for to chase after your imaginary “property” rights? Why should we respect them at all?

I will NEVER buy a download game (such as via Steam) at a higher price than they’ll sell it to an American customer. NEVER. I may try to work around the restriction by using a US paying account and a US proxy, but if that doesn’t work I will not buy it at all. THEY WILL GET NONE OF MY MONEY. There is ZERO chance of me paying them more for less.

Get stuffed, you discriminatory arseholes.

ELSEWHERE: What a publisher that’s thinking straight does about “piracy”.

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Just how far over do they want us to bend?

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

I was going to buy Battlefield: Bad Company 2 tomorrow, but I’ll be making other arrangements, now.

JB Hi-Fi usually does this thing where it charges an actual plausible price for new release games, $79, on the day they come out. Then it increases the price to the farcical $99 or higher price that the game distributors think Australians should be paying. I’d sooner go without than be gouged that much. The point of this is that it encourages me to go out and buy the game on the very limited early reviews, rather than waiting around and considering how the title is going down before laying down my hard-earned.

In the case of BF:BC2, JB is selling only the “Limited Edition”, and at $99 (which is still $10 cheaper than the nearest rival at Eastland). And what “extras” do you get in this “Limited Edition”? You get some guns and armour. That’s right, you’re paying $20 extra for basic content that’s on the disk – ie, if you buy the normal edition at the somewhat reasonable (but still inflated in Australia) price, you’re having content deliberately locked away from you.

Dear publishers, distributors, everyone responsible for this system – get stuffed. I won’t be buying the game at all at this rate – or, at most, I’ll be importing it from Play Asia for about $70. Unless the game is truly spectacular, I may well just go without. I’ll certainly be waiting to see what everyone else thinks of it, on reflection – it might not be worth buying at all.

What’s even stupider about this is that EA is trying to get the Bad Company 2 set up as a competitive rival to COD:MW2. And the way it starts that is by gouging Australian customers on the first day?

I haven’t, by the way, heard that EA is implementing a local match filter for BC, either – the biggest problem with the COD series in Australia will just be repeated with EA’s effort.

No, I’m not sold. Screw ‘em.

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