Capitan wrote on Mar 11, 2013, 09:18:
This is what happens when already large companies try to come up with new ways to make money. The company makes excuses about what is done is for the customer / users best, when in actual is about the come up with ways to "force of money" by the customer / user.
The extension of this will be that the diversity of game ideas will suffer and the games will probably be increasingly unimaginative and mainstream to guarantee an income.
I'm afraid that companies like EA isn't good for the gaming industry at all.
It's an interesting problem, the cost of development has made companies like EA the only resource available if you want to make a traditional AAA quality title. On the other hand there's a legitimate argument to be made about marketing and other support costs helping driving the cost of bringing a title to market too high.
EA has brought some quality titles to the market in the past, Mass Effect, Dragon Age Origins, Dead Space, Mirror's Edge, etc. Unfortunately like Hollywood, they've devolved into playing it safe, even worse they keep seeking new revenue sources and their tactics keep becoming more and more invasive while they justify it as good for the consumer.
As a consumer I don't see anything good for me here. The game isn't cheaper to offset any potential inconveniences, they retain control and can shut down the servers at any time under the guise of "no one plays it anymore". I see some pro-EA posters say that people need to get with the times, everyone has internet blah etc blah. What do I get from this change? Why should anyone accept something that is only good for EA?
I'm sure that hackers will come out with a server emulator... probably one that can be run in the background of the same machine as the game client... and one that will be better since you won't be running against EA's artificial size limitations that they intend to sell "unlocking larger zones" to people.
Assuming it's feasible to reverse engineer in the first place, I'm not sure there is the interest level to bother unfortunately. I haven't heard of any efforts to do so yet.
This comment was edited on Mar 11, 2013, 09:33.