Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 2332599" data-attributes="member: 143">I agree with KenM. EA is rapidly moving up to pass Atari (i.e. Infogrammes) to the top spot on my all-time most hated publisher list. While it is a demo, and I have already preordered the game, little petty stuff like this is just annoying. I think there are two things at work here. The first is that when BF1942 came out, many people just played the Wake Island demo for months, instead of rushing out to buy the game at once upon release. Since computer games have a sharp initial price curve downward (at least relatively so; I usually see the first step from $50 to $40 within a few months, and the next $10 drop within the first year), they want people to buy soon after release. I'm sure being able to show high initial sales figures have something to do with it as well. By crippling the demo (Wake Island was essentially a complete game in itself), they push people to buy the final version soon after release. Second, from what the company reps on the EA UK forums have been saying, I think that it's just a play to justify their policy of mandating official EA servers (available for a fee to those willing to host) in order to gain ranking points. Calling the removal of the timelimit a "hack" is just stupid (IMHO), bit it allows them to claim that this policy is necessary to give them control by mandating official servers in order for people to participate in the ranking system. This is also why they require official "accounts" to play online, which many people have been griping about on the forums. I think EA just wants a bigger share of the pay-to-play market, and since FPSes aren't historically included in that category (Planetside being the exception), this is the way they are going about it; going after the dedicated server hosts who are such a big part of keeping a game alive over the long-term. Claiming that they are trying to save the public from unfair "hacks" to justify their official-servers-only policy post-release is pretty insulting to the public. Again IMHO.</blockquote>

Verification