Ea to charge for game demos

Evilsod · 25 Mar 2010 at 12:15

-BA- said:
Completely agree with Cyberganster. A portion of a game that is complete is a demo, a portion of an incomplete game that requires feedback from the community is a beta. No chance of me paying for a beta that's for sure.

Only if that feedback is actually looked at, considered and maybe something in game actually changes. The BC2 Demo was clearly not a beta because **** all changed. Oh wait thats because you didn't get access to 90% of the games content so we couldn't actually test it :rolleyes:

Crowze · 25 Mar 2010 at 13:56

Evilsod said:
Only if that feedback is actually looked at, considered and maybe something in game actually changes. The BC2 Demo was clearly not a beta because **** all changed. Oh wait thats because you didn't get access to 90% of the games content so we couldn't actually test it

Unfortunately it's not an uncommon tactic - call a demo a beta so that gamers think it's some sort of super-special exclusive sneak preview, and encourage them to pre-order to get 'early access' to it. This just seems like a natural extension to that, but having gamers pay up front instead. Such a shame so many people will buy into it regardless.

Bad times indeed.

MumboJumbo · 25 Mar 2010 at 14:04

Isn't it obvious why they did this? EA games are becoming shockingly bad and just carbon copies of previous EA games. They don't want you to realise this before you buy a game so they will make the demo but say you have to pay so that if you do buy the demo and discover its poo at least you have given them some money. Really people, keep up!

icehot · 25 Mar 2010 at 14:06

Gideon Lorr said:
EA is now descending back into the pit from whence it came

When did they come out of there

?

Evilsod · 25 Mar 2010 at 14:08

Crowze said:
Unfortunately it's not an uncommon tactic - call a demo a beta so that gamers think it's some sort of super-special exclusive sneak preview, and encourage them to pre-order to get 'early access' to it. This just seems like a natural extension to that, but having gamers pay up front instead. Such a shame so many people will buy into it regardless.

Bad times indeed.

Sadly that sounds quite accurate. The Left 4 Dead 2 DEMO released a polished game with access to 2 of the maps, Campaign mode only (which was a bit of a pain) and the majority of guns available. None of it was for evaluation purposes.
The Bad Company 2 BETA released the 'stable' version of the client, not the version they were actually going to release which kinda defeats the point (why were they working on 2 versions anyway), gave you access to the first few weapons of each set only for us to find out later that the other weapons are ridiculously unbalanced, same goes for the perks we couldn't get. 1 choice of map and mode so we couldn't feedback the rest. It was so halfarsed.

It is sadly true to say it was to get people to buy into it early, it was worth the money but yeah... 1 step closer.

ThomasTheTankEngine · 25 Mar 2010 at 15:13

Yet another case of them screwing legitmate customers, whilst not affecting the illegal downloaders one bit.

Sod it... I think BC2 might be the last EA game i buy.

Oizu · 25 Mar 2010 at 15:30

It might work in some situations, but if I HAVE to buy prelaunch DLC or watch someone else play it on youtube to be able to understand the story of the main game, I will NOT be buying said game.