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EA’s Steam pricing finally criticized
Finally someone else than us noticed the non-sense pricing on Steam. It’s kind of sad it took a over a year for someone to finally see it. Although, better late than never.
Not that we didn’t contact IGN a year ago about this…but oh well. Anyway, here’s the post:
“I noticed something when cooking up the Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening and Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Limited Edition Steam pre-order posts – why is there a discrepency in EA’s regional pricing?
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Limited Edition: $49.99 / €49.99 / £34.99
Real World: $50 = €35 / $50 = £31 / €50 = £43Dragon Age Origins – Awakening: $39.99 / €29.99 / £19.99
Real World: $40 = €28 / $40 = £24 / €30 = £26Ignoring EA’s laughable exchange rates, why is Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Limited Edition $49.99/€49.99, and Dragon Age Origins – Awakening $39.99/€29.99? Following EA’s own logic, DAOA should be $39.99/€39.99. Don’t get me wrong, I prefer the lower price, but why is it only applied to DAOA and not BFBC2LE?
The cynic inside me says because they’ve already got Dragon Age players hooked and so it’s a sure bet they’ll buy the expansion, whereas BFBC2LE buyers might not like what they see, and may not necessarily buy the inevitable expansion or DLC.
Think I’m crazy? Take a look at Dragon Age: Origins’ Steam pricing – $49.99 / €49.99 / £29.99!
Also note that the UK equivalent price jumped £5 on BFBC2LE, compared to DAO. Exchange rates have shifted since Dragon Age’s release, but not sufficiently so to justify a £5 increase.
In conclusion, EA’s regional Steam pricing is a huge con, stiffing mainland Europeans considerably. Having lived among the natives for seven years I suggest using Play.com, if you don’t mind a delivery taking up to two weeks, or Amazon UK if you don’t mind paying a few quid extra for their cheapest delivery option, which typically gets a game to your doorstep a few days after release, if not on the day of release.
In the interest of fairness I should point out that other publishers use rip-off exchange rates on Steam, but only EA has introduced these new discrepancies.”
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Zero Gear get a beta Steam key!
There’s a rumor on the net that Valve is giving out keys to some unknown game. We just wanted to clear it all out, you just have to go here and get your free beta key for Zero Gear – a funny racing game (similar to Mario Kart). So don’t listen to some morons on the Internet and don’t think of buying this key either when someone wants to sell them – those keys are totally free and temporary.
After you receive a key enter it in the Steam client and download the free beta while you can! The game takes around 240MB.
Have fun!
And here are some screenshots:
And here’s a short gameplay video I made the other day:
South Africa: Modern Warfare 2 fails once more
I just got word from a member (GhOst) of an online community that I’m part of. He just returned from a local retailer here in South Africa, BTGames, where COD MW2 was released at 00:00 tonight – about 1h 30 minutes ago – with his brand spanking new legit copy of the game he pre-ordered @ ~$60 and whatnot in hand he rushed home.
Some nice shots of the retail box…and what makes this story newsworthy though is this picture below. A picture is worth a thousand words indeed…
And this is after everyone were promised the game will work 100% after the street date here in SA – hence the midnight release and everything.
News thanks to our user ld13 (here).
Update: http://steamunpowered.eu/forums/submit-news-in-here/south-african-cod-mw2-release-fail/#p335
Gearbox: Valve is childish and narrow minded
Valve’s dislike of the PS3 isn’t exactly a secret and because of that Randy Pitchford, the President of Gearbox (the developers of Borderlands), felt the need to speak up in Sony’s defense. In a recent interview with the U.K.’s Official PlayStation Magazine, Pitchford said:
I noticed something on the net not too long ago. Doug Lombardi (Valve’s VP Marketing) had to take a swipe at the PS3 again, and I thought it was foolish. I read it the same way I read fanboys. Like there’s a guy who bought the Sony platform and he’s a Sony guy, so he decides he’s going to spend a certain percentage of his time bashing Microsoft. And there’s a guy on Microsoft doing the same thing. Those guys are childish and narrow minded, it’s the same kind of thing.
Pitchford went on to suggest that Valve is a selfish developer:
Valve think their own stuff is the only stuff that matters, to the point where they have their own distribution platform. It’s like, I don’t care about retail, about Marketplace, or PSN, I’m going to have Steam. It’s cool, it’s good, and they’re doing a good job but at the same time they’re reliant on the rest of the world. They had to do that [Left 4 Dead] deal with EA. When I see the L4D ad on the television I don’t see a Valve logo, I see an EA logo, and when I bought it, I bought it at a store.
This guy raises some good points. What do you think? Is Pitchford on the money, or does Valve have every right to decide what platforms to develop for?
Source: gameinformer.com
Online Retailers Refusing To Sell Modern Warfare 2
Kotaku just posted that Direct2Drive won’t be selling Modern Warfare 2 on their PC digital delivery service. Why? Because of rival platform – Steam.
The game includes mandatory installation of Valve’s Steamworks, which the game uses for stuff like installation, DRM and save-game management. Something Direct2Drive (which is owned by website IGN) are having none of, telling:
We don’t believe games should force the user to install a Trojan Horse.
That “Trojan Horse” being the inclusion of Steam’s commercial marketplace.
D2D also told Kotaku that, having evaluated some Steamworks titles earlier in the year (such as Empire: Total War and Dawn of War II) and finding the forced inclusion of Steam’s storefront (offering automatic competition to D2D’s own services) not to their liking, told publishers that they’d stop selling games bundled in such a manner until Valve “decoupled its retail marketplace” from Steam’s other services.
To be clear, D2D’s beef is not with Activision, it’s with Steam, and to prove there’s no bad blood between the retailer and mega-publisher, $5 coupons will soon be offered on select Activision titles to make up for it.
But that’s not all it seems Impulse have come out today and also confirmed they won’t be stocking the game, for the same reasons. Digital store Gamersgate have told Kotaku that, like D2D and Impulse, they will also not be stocking Modern Warfare 2, and again, for the same reason.
Is this the failure of Modern Warfare 2 for PC? We’ll see. Oh and by the way vote in our poll:
Loading ...Modern Warfare 2: Steam only?
Robert Bowling said on his Twitter account, "you’ll also have Prestige Mode in PC as well as lots of Steam support. Hopefully min specs will be soon." That’s not a lot of detail, but at least the guy posted something.
As far as I know the game will use Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC) system – a lot of CoD fansites claim it’s true.
Does it mean that the game will be registareable on Steam? I mean the retail box version? I guess we will find out soon! If yes, we can expect fair prices in retail stores (hopefully) and we can get it for a lot lower price than it will possibly be on Steam.
Euro Gamer prepares it’s own digital distribution store!
According to Czech Euro Gamer website (translated by Google) they are planning to start a new digital distribution service for Europeans called Get Games.
And here’s what they said:
Steam’s European competition was officially announced today. People prefer digital distribution before retail versions of games. The increase in popularity of services such as Steam is a nice proof.
European network Eurogamer is planning its own digital distribution system called Get Games – in cooperation with Mastertronic, which is a well known British distribution company.
“Mastertronic sold over 30 million titles on the PC platform,” said Andy Payne, head of the company. “The last five years, we’ve been selling some titles in pure digital form, so we gathered enough experience in this field. When you combine that experience with quality content and attendance of Eurogamer, we have a winning formula.”
Focus new digital distribution to Get Games on PC games.
The offer will be: the latest news, independent and classic titles and games available for free.
“Small and independent producers often contact us because they want us to help in promoting their games,” said Rupert Loman, Managing Director of Eurogamer Network. “With this new service we can provide a lot of such gaming enthusiasts.”
Get Games will have its headquarters in London. It will have all sorts of specialists, programmers and customer support. The exact launch date has not yet been officially announced, but it will be sooner than you probably think.
Future goal is to start local versions of the new service for digital distribution across Europe.
Thanks to fix-cz for providing the news!
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L4D2 Boycott group leader visits Valve
Boycotting Left 4 Dead 2? Think again. Initiator of the whole protest was invited by Valve to their studio (all expenses paid), he could see with his own eyes how the game looks like. The result? He’s delighted.
Valve invited (and paid for flights and hotels needed to carry out this tour) the Steam user Walking_Target to Valve headquarters. They presented Left 4 Dead 2 in its current condition and after that had a bit of friendly chat.
What does the boycott group leader think about the game? Here’s a quote: “The high quality of the game is not in doubt and I am confident that it will be even better.”
What do you think? Is the game really good or is that guy just a sell out?
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Czech Computer: Left 4 Dead 2 Fail
Czech store Czech Computer added Left 4 Dead 2 to their store lately… and look what they’ve used as the game cover:
This is hilarious, news thanks to XanderCz!
Exclusive interview on GameTrailers.com
Valve delivers fresh infusions to its biggest franchises: Left 4 Dead 2, Portal 2 and Team Fortress.
Gabe Newell mentions the Left 4 Dead 2 Boycott group. You can find out a lot about Left 4 Dead 2 and see the new campaign for Left 4 Dead – Crash Course.
Gabe also answers a lot of questions asked on Twitter. Too bad we didn’t know about that…we could have asked about the prices…oh wait, we just did.
Latest on Tue, 06:43 pm
: Midweek Madness Skyrim 33% off http://cdn.store.steampowered.com/message/1028181507618443955/
: fallout 3 goty just received a price drop to 20€; also fo:nv ultimate edition (includes all dlc and preorder bonuses) just released
: 
: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2521400
: http://login.ign.com/prime/promos/rochard/?display=notAuth
: new indie gala bundle later this week at www.indiegala.com/
: money money money
: can anyone explain what's the friggin' deal with Age of Empires III, a 5 years old game being sold as new @40$/€ on almost every DD platform?
: Facebook is archiving the old Facebook group of ours, here's new one https://www.facebook.com/pages/SteamUnpoweredeu/260963810615450?v=wall
: 
: Checkout Crytek's GFACE, a new social platform for gaming http://www.gface.com/closed-beta
: 
: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Jnk8n3WrXU
: new humble bundle live
: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMWW92UhpZs&feature=player_embedded
: 
: http://www.tumblr.com/photo/1280/epic4chan/15893009078/1/tumblr_lxkmq8V94p1r9t8yb
: http://www.avaaz.org/en/eu_save_the_internet/?tta
: http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/oxzje/official_steam_app_for_android_and_ios/c3l34d2
: there's still hope, first ratification of ACTA in polish parliament and even if it passes european parliament has to vote on it then
: yep, another protest today in Warsaw, and next one during National Stadium opening on Sunday
: So PL actually did sign ACTA? :( Is it right that those guy said sth like "i'll not be extorted by those inhabitants"? o.O
: the next indie royale bundle is live (serious sam indie bundle)
: 
Loading ...Cool shirts and shit
