Epic: Can we give gamers free updates? Microsoft: No

[Darth Wong]

Shut the fuck up, thread-hijacking retard.

If a company does something bad and people complain about it, it's nothing more than a thread hijack to say "Aha, but other companies are not morally perfect either!"

[Hotfoot]

Well here's the problem, as I see it. Epic has, for years, worked in the PC market. Offering free content is easy and gains them good rep with their consumers. However, the idea of charging for new content is not, in itself, immoral. After all, work is done, money should be paid to compensate the people doing the work. After all, if you do not compensate people for their work, they will have no reason to continue doing their work, because they need to survive. Epic considers free content to be a better long term financial decision because it makes their customers more loyal and more likely to spread word of mouth. However, Epic also makes a massive amount of money by selling its graphics engine. That is its major cash cow, so it can afford to be more generous with its money in the short term.

Publishers, especially in the console market are not passive creatures. They are just as invested in the creation of a game as the developers, as they are the ones funding its development more often than not. They also pay for shipping, marketing, and so on. The idea that they should have no say in the pricing of the product they have paid to create makes no sense.

The only thing that's immoral about paying for additional content is when you charge more than it is realistically worth, or you charge more than people are willing to pay for it (hurting the consumer and hurting the developer, repsectively).

Now, to attack Microsoft for wanting to charge for this content is nonsensical unless you attack ALL such companies for doing the same thing. Remember, no price was mentioned, so we can't objectively tell if the price for this product would hurt consumers or developers. So we are now reduced to attacking the practice, which all console companies are guilty of. This is, on the face of it, nonsensical. Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft all have a financial stake in every game that comes out for their systems, and that of course includes any additional content that comes out for each game. We can attack individual items of being priced too high, but that hasn't come into consideration here.

So now we come down to the conflict between Microsoft and Epic. Epic wants to release content on Live Marketplace for free. Microsoft owns the Marketplace, and paid for the original game. They've already released some free content for this game, now they want to make some extra money. They've presumably already paid Epic for developing the game and want to make as much money as they can. The only thing I can think of that would completely derail this is if Epic paid for the development of this content out of their own pockets instead of the money Microsoft paid them to make the game AND they were willing to pay the bandwidth costs that would be incurred by players downloading this over Live Marketplace, but even then, Microsoft has the right to protect their own market on the Live Marketplace.

They've done what they could to make sure that the pricings for various DLC are roughly equivilant for what they do, with free teasers to entice people to pay for the rest. That Epic wants to throw a wrench in this balance can potentially hurt revenues from other games made by developers that don't have the deep pockets that Epic does.

So, to sum up:
-Publishers have a right to make money on the products they fund.
-Micropayments for additional content is not in itself an immoral or bad thing.
-Consoles are more tightly controlled entities than PCs. The supposed benefit of this, of course, is supposed to be ease of use and conformity.
-Developers on the console are by nature more restricted than on the PC, but even then, Publishers determine what can or does go to the market.

[Stark]

On price - assuming none has been announced - similar 'maps + new units' addons for ie Battlestations Midway cost 400 points. This is (I believe) about US$5, and due to AU getting fucked about AU$7. They're not charging addon prices, and they've been charging for similar addons for some time. This is only an issue, I feel, because Microsoft is demanding it be sold, but others have been over the reality behind that already.

[Xisiqomelir]

Well, I guess this is a partial victory. Good job disseminating hate, those of you who did.

Here is a response to a thread over at EvilAvatar that I posted this morning. You can download the podcast at 1UPYours.com - this is the April 6th edition. The interview with Epic CEO and founder, Tim Sweeney, and myself starts a little bit after 38 minutes into the podcast.

Folks,

I think you guys are blowing this up into something bigger than it is. Please listen to the entire podcast before jumping to conclusions.

What we have here is simply a difference of opinion on how to maximize the return on Gears of War - something both Epic and Microsoft want to do. While we create products like Gears because we love games, and we have a passion for making them, at the end of the day this is a business for both companies and how we earn our living.

Epic thinks the way to maximize the return on Gears of War is to give the maps away for free and Microsoft thinks the way to maximize the return on Gears of War is to sell the maps. So what we’ve agreed to do is to put these maps on sale at a reasonable price then make them free a few months later. They did this with the original Halo2 map pack and it was a huge success. Lots of people bought the maps and lots of people downloaded them when they became free. That’s what is going to happen and it seems like a fair compromise for both companies and a win-win for Gears players.

Why does Epic not have control over this even though we created this content on our own time and our own dime? Quite frankly Xbox Live Marketplace isn’t our store. It’s Microsoft’s store. Like any retailer they have the right to figure out what goes on the shelves of their store and what price they sell it at. They spend the money to operate the store and deliver the content. They’ve also spent billions of dollars to create and build Xbox and subsidize it’s the price so you can afford it and we can make games for it. As our publisher, they also invested tens of millions of dollars marketing Gears of War, and have done an awesome job for us, so they have a right to a good return on that investment.

As Tim Sweeney and I said in the podcast, we want the download economy to work – it is something the industry needs, something we hope to use in the future, something that will help bring more variety to end-users and ultimately could help bring prices down for end-users. If we had to put this map pack on a disc and sell it in retail it would be more expensive to end-users and maybe we wouldn't have done it because of all the extra work and cost involved.

In the mean time we are planning to bring out an awesome new Gears of War multi-player gametype called Annex that works will all of the existing multi-player maps and the new pack we're talking about here. The 1UP guys who got to play it a few weeks ago left the office raving about how it could be our best Gears gametype yet and I think a lot of people will enjoy it. Best of all, it is totally FREE and will come in the new Gears update that we expect to see released this week.

[Hotfoot]

So basically everything I've been saying is accurate. Color me shocked.

Microsoft has a right to make a profit from material they are distributing, and a right to make a profit from material they funded. Just like every other gaming company in existance. That Microsoft wanted to keep Epic from releasing this stuff for free is just common sense, just like every other company would want to protect their investments. This is a business, and you shouldn't be shocked that investors would want returns on their investments.

It's clear the model works, people are willing to pay for the content, and the model even makes sense. The only problem is that the price point for content is still in question.

Now the only question is that of which model works best in building long-term economic viability. They both have strengths, Microsoft's model gives short-term economic gain from existing users who buy the content, while Epic's model can gain long-term economic gain as word of mouth spreads that the value for the dollar for the game is better than most. It creates brand loyalty, which is always good. The downside to Microsoft's method is that not everyone will want to pay for the content, it is still hard to accept paying for a game again after you've paid once. But, with the advent of MMOs and services like Gametap, the idea of continually paying for a game is growing. Epic's model, meanwhile, is bad for short term business, because extra work is being done without pay. It's a great thing, but not every company can realistically pull it off, and it's based on the hope that the consumer loyalty will result in more units sold as the product sits on the shelf and the next time around in the anticipation of the content.

The compromise here isn't bad, of course, since it merges the two methods, and it would be great if they followed this method for all of their games, but remember that they do want to make money, and if every single bit of extra content got lowered in price after three to six months or was made free in the same period of time, pretty soon the number of people willing to buy the product goes down.

What's important to remember here is that these bits of extra content are not essential. If the bugfixes attached to the content were somehow essential to continued play, and Microsoft demanded payment, I could see an argument of how Microsoft is some evil, money-grubbing empire, but to bitch and moan about them participating in a common and accepted business practice is retarded. So unless someone can craft an argument detailing why payment for content is unethical, or why it's unethical for Microsoft to want to control the content provided on their network, or why it's unethical for Microsoft to want to profit from their investment, the entire attack on the original article is idiotic.

And, as I've stated before, if you attack the very core of the matter, paying for content past the original game, you have to consider the rest of the gaming industry, not just Microsoft.

[MKSheppard]

Yet we routinely have patches for games, etc released which go into the hundreds of megabytes level. Just to patch my IL-2 Forgotten battles up to the latest 4.0x I had to download 700 MB of different patch files; yet the PC gaming community doesn't have a problem with this...

[Hotfoot]

PC games aren't Console games is the simple response. The more complex response is this:

1. To counter, on the PC you also have expansion packs that should have been patches, sequels that should have been expansion packs, and there are still micropayments for content. MMOs are a key example. What you pay for content will vary more from game to game.

2. It doesn't cost the publisher as much to distribute the patch because the developers can simply give the file to any number of filesharing sites, who then foot the bill on their own. However, as you may have noticed over the years, finding a download site that gives fast, reliable connections for free are dwindling. WoW has started putting their patches on Fileplanet where subscribers pay for reliable downloads because their own patch delivery process was overwhelmed by demand.

3. These are PATCHES which sometimes contain extra content, but are under no obligation to do so. PATCHES are still free on consoles, but extra content is not.

4. PCs are not subjected to the same rigid controls that Consoles are. In the PC market, the developers, publishers, hardware makers, and operating system makers are all very seperate entities, all competing with a number of factors. In the Console market, hardware makers, publishers, and OS designers are all one big entity, meaning that they have much more control with what is done with their system. PCs, of course, don't JUST play games, they happen to play games as well as a variety of other things.

[Vendetta]

yet the PC gaming community doesn't have a problem with this...

That's because when you play games on a PC you accept that you are an unpaid QA tester if you buy within the first six months. I think it's in the EULA if you read close enough

[Darth Wong]

Shouldn't it be possible to make a downloadable ISO file that you can burn to a disc and then stick in the machine to patch it? Hell, you can download firmware upgrades for DVD players that are just ISO files. Stick it in the DVD player and voila!

[Hotfoot]

Shouldn't it be possible to make a downloadable ISO file that you can burn to a disc and then stick in the machine to patch it? Hell, you can download firmware upgrades for DVD players that are just ISO files. Stick it in the DVD player and voila!

Sure, it should be possible. However, given that the console is not as simple as a DVD player, there are other possible complications.

Remember, the goal with consoles is that you need to make them simple to use. Console customers already don't like the fact that now they may need patches for their games, throwing in a more complicated process for getting content or patches onto their machines and you've have a fair amount of consumer unrest. Tell someone that in order to update his game he has to go through a relatively complex act, and Joe Consumer will tell you to fuck off. The Live Update system is, in comparison, very streamlined. When you need an update, it tells you, you press a button, and it's done.

Now, for content, yes, it is possible, but once it gets out into the Internet at large, it's at a much higher piracy risk than through the Live Marketplace setup. It's entirely understandable that Microsoft doesn't want to take that risk. There are also possible security concerns that could be introduced by allowing updates through a consumer-created disk update system.

For all the progress that has been made in the last generation and a half of consoles to make them more like PCs, there are still thresholds that aren't being crossed. At the end of the day, doing it one way is easier than doing it both ways, and in order for the system to work, there has to be a solid way of doing it with just the console, without needing a computer at all, so I'm not going to lose sleep over the fact that Microsoft didn't do that AND something else.

In any case, the patching system isn't really what's in conflict here. Consoles apply patches as needed for free, no problems. The real debate is about additional content. Now, yes, there could be a way to do it via PC to your console, and in the future that might even be the case. There's already a rudimentary filesharing system for the 360 that lets it play media stored on your computer (of course, only for windows approved formats, ugh), but I suspect that they limited the connectivity for ease of use for the average consumer more than anything. In designing a console, you don't want the consumer to be able to delete a key file that lets the thing run after all.

Don't get me wrong, for folks like you and me, downloading a patch and burning it onto a disk for an update is easy, laughably so in fact. But we're not your average consumer, and that's who all the consoles are pandering to, first and foremost.

[Spyder]

Some people have a curious habit of setting their moral and ethical standards at the status quo.

[Hotfoot]

Some people have a curious habit of setting their moral and ethical standards at the status quo.

If that's directed at me, I ask you to please show how the following are morally and ethically wrong:

-Investors to want profit for the fruits of an investment
-Content providers to want compensation for time spent on content
-Publishers to want compensation for the cost of distributing a product

Because those are the critical issues being questioned here, the first and last most specifically.

This goes beyond what makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside. Just because something is good for you does not make it good for someone else. I'm tired of people who have this expectation that they should get something for free "just because". If someone wants to give you something for free, fantastic, great for them. That doesn't mean that other people can make a living like that, and while I'm sure there's this fantastic dream of a utopia where everyone donates a fair amount for what they take for free, life doesn't work that way.

[Spyder]

Some people have a curious habit of setting their moral and ethical standards at the status quo.

If that's directed at me, I ask you to please show how the following are morally and ethically wrong:

-Investors to want profit for the fruits of an investment
-Content providers to want compensation for time spent on content
-Publishers to want compensation for the cost of distributing a product

Because those are the critical issues being questioned here, the first and last most specifically.

This goes beyond what makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside. Just because something is good for you does not make it good for someone else. I'm tired of people who have this expectation that they should get something for free "just because". If someone wants to give you something for free, fantastic, great for them. That doesn't mean that other people can make a living like that, and while I'm sure there's this fantastic dream of a utopia where everyone donates a fair amount for what they take for free, life doesn't work that way.

They're decent enough points, I'd bring up the same points myself if I was to argue in favor of Microsoft. What you have to be careful of though is that using examples from other industry players and then saying that these examples are therefore ethical because they use them is something of a fallacy as it doesn't actually explain why they're ethical, just popular.

[Hotfoot]

That point was directed towards Xissy's near-pathological hatred of Microsoft. He has stated previously that he can hate something simply because it was made by Microsoft, with no other factors needed. I was trying to get him to see that if he finds the concept unacceptable here, he must find it unacceptable anywhere. Since he doesn't seem to have a problem with it in Sony and Nintendo, there is a logical inconsistancy, you see?

As I have stated previously, the only way the system can realistically be criticized is through the price attached to the content. If it is too high, consumers suffer, and if it is too low, the developers and publishers can suffer. The system itself is fine, for the previously stated points. Of course, silly me, I thought that those points were taken for granted in and that people understood the idea that work requires compensation.

In this case, the publisher would have suffered if Epic had released the content for free, as has been discussed in the thread already. The fact that the publisher in this case was Microsoft should be immaterial, but Xissy decided that, because it was Microsoft, it was automatically in the wrong and that the only reason they would want to charge money for it MUST be because they are moneygrubbing sons of bitches. God forbid we should look at them objectively as just another company when analyzing their actions, instead of automatically assuming the worst just because it's Microsoft.

[Vendetta]

Shouldn't it be possible to make a downloadable ISO file that you can burn to a disc and then stick in the machine to patch it? Hell, you can download firmware upgrades for DVD players that are just ISO files. Stick it in the DVD player and voila!

Possibly. The Xbox emulator on the Xbox 360 can be patched by downloading an iso file and burning it to CD.

Depends whether Microsoft want to run the platform that way though. The Xbox is designed to only run digitally signed content, as copy protection, and the more copies of the content out there, in easily pickable apart formats, the worse for the protection.

It also means that people can't try replacing the contents of a patch file with something to give themselves an advantage over Xbox Live