EA restructuring

[VirtualAce]

Gamasutra - News - EA Announces Increased Net Loss, Confirms 1,500 Layoffs

This could cause a lot of planned games to get cancelled. I hope it won't touch Dead Space 2 or Mass Effect 2. I doubt it will since those have been officially announced. It does appear though that 12 un-announced projects have been cancelled. It's too bad too since EA was finally coming around and putting out some very awesome games not to mention all the devs who won't have a very good Christmas or will spend it looking for work. I tip my hat to EA for trying something new and trying to appeal to a different audience. Games like Dead Space and Mass Effect to name a few only come along once in a great while.

Then they turn around and buy some other company for 300 million? Sorta odd. EA needs to get into agreements with Steam and Direct2Drive type sites b/c that is where the PC money is being made. Even I have started making small purchases of somewhat dated games on D2D. I haven't yet made a major purchase on D2D b/c I still like unwrapping a new game and opening it up for the first time. However I think those days might be coming to an end. Besides there are sequels to some well known games that never hit the shelves but are available for download.

I'm not a big fan of Steam but I do like Direct2Drive's format and business model and the fact that I alone own the game, the CD-key, and as long as D2D is in business I can quickly find the keys to all my games online - AND I can re-download them via their nifty download manager at any time. It's all so automatic and easy and it works.

[abachler]

I like having a physical copy of my game. The online storage of CD-KEYS would be nice, but I still prefer to install from a disk rather than having to download it.

[Mario F.]

My only objection to downloadable games (and I've rant about those in the past) is exactly Online Dependency. Something that I profoundly abhor.

Definitely nothing beats the box version, mostly because of its collectible value which I tend to highly appreciate. But until I can download a game once and never again need to be online to install or activate it, you will always hear me complaining. And that includes D2D.

What's p...ing me off is that apparently that's a no-win situation for me. Not only it doesn't look like I will ever have that, but also downloadable games are starting to show up at unbeatable prices and some are being exclusively distributed by these systems. All because of the Steam tarts that keep breeding like rabbits.

Joining the masses sometime eventually seems to be my only hope. But I'll rip the eyes out of anyone -- that being today your prototyped Steam tart -- in the future starts complaining that they would like to have had boxed versions of the games they played 2 decades ago.

[rdrast]

My only objection to downloadable games (and I've rant about those in the past) is exactly Online Dependency. Something that I profoundly abhor.

I agree 100%. But It's not only games Mario, the major industrial automation vendors are moving away from hardware keys, and license key-disks to "OnLine Authorization" as well, and that is a major problem.

One thing I do NOT want to do, is put my manufacturing network on the public internet, or even a VPN, yet publishers are pushing this now. It's also a nightmare to recover or rebuild a crashed system... Restore from image? NOPE! Need to re-authenticate! New HDD? Re-Authenticate! Power Blip corrupts something? Re-Authenticate.

It's not a cost saving measure either... Every piece of software I buy for a system runs between $3000 and $10000; I'm sure they could build in even USB Thumb authentication for a tiny bit of that.

[abachler]

I agree 100%. But It's not only games Mario, the major industrial automation vendors are moving away from hardware keys, and license key-disks to "OnLine Authorization" as well, and that is a major problem.

One thing I do NOT want to do, is put my manufacturing network on the public internet, or even a VPN, yet publishers are pushing this now. It's also a nightmare to recover or rebuild a crashed system... Restore from image? NOPE! Need to re-authenticate! New HDD? Re-Authenticate! Power Blip corrupts something? Re-Authenticate.

It's not a cost saving measure either... Every piece of software I buy for a system runs between $3000 and $10000; I'm sure they could build in even USB Thumb authentication for a tiny bit of that.

I use KEYLOK dongles, they run about $30 a pop. I agree it is a very bad idea to have you manufacturing network in any way accessible from the internet. One day Skynet will take over and turn your plastic bag factory into a terminator factory.