http://www.techdirt.com/ Easily digestible tech news.... http://www.techdirt.com/blog/casestudies/articles/20130508/06065623001/new-hope-how-going-free-to-play-brought-redemption-to-star-wars-mmo.shtml#c249 Mon, 20 May 2013 07:20:59 PDT http://www.techdirt.com/blog/casestudies/articles/20130508/06065623001/new-hope-how-going-free-to-play-brought-redemption-to-star-wars-mmo.shtml#c249 It's a shame they haven't tried a similar strategy with other EA games like SimCity, instead choosing to lock the game up tighter than Han Solo trapped in carbonite with an always-online requirement nobody wants.

Umm... I hated just about everything they put out about Sim City, especially the online-only DRM and the social aspects of it but... You can't really say that what happened here with SWTOR is the solution to Sim City's woes.

All SWTOR did was remove the money investment that people needed, both in buying it and the monthly subscription. Nobody was complaining about Sim City's cost (aside from the people angry that PC games are costing $60, which was only that price for console games because of the massive license fee they pay to console makers), and it had no subscription.

In fact, SWTOR still has "online-only" requirements, and unlike Sim City a lot of the game's calculations are done on servers. In addition, it is arbitrarily locking up a LOT of content behind their "optional" monthly subscription pay wall, meaning that free loaders can't even use it as much as they can or get the same items, unlike in Sim City which, after its initial investment everything is available.

Long story short, I am not trying to defend Sim City's horrible choices. All I am saying is that F2P makes sense in situations, but what going F2P changed in this case would not apply to fix what was wrong with Sim City.]]> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130515/07262023094/restaurant-facebook-goes-nuclear-facebook-over-reviews-gordon-ramsay-owner-cry-hack.shtml#c1217 Mon, 20 May 2013 07:19:44 PDT http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130515/07262023094/restaurant-facebook-goes-nuclear-facebook-over-reviews-gordon-ramsay-owner-cry-hack.shtml#c1217 http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130518/17573523139/funniestmost-insightful-comments-week-techdirt.shtml#c206 Mon, 20 May 2013 07:12:33 PDT http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130518/17573523139/funniestmost-insightful-comments-week-techdirt.shtml#c206 As we learned

Now that's the funniest comment of the week by far. You are assuming learning where clearly none is evident.]]> http://www.techdirt.com/blog/casestudies/articles/20130508/06065623001/new-hope-how-going-free-to-play-brought-redemption-to-star-wars-mmo.shtml#c238 Mon, 20 May 2013 07:11:51 PDT http://www.techdirt.com/blog/casestudies/articles/20130508/06065623001/new-hope-how-going-free-to-play-brought-redemption-to-star-wars-mmo.shtml#c238
If they could get entirely for free what they have to pay for today, most if not all of them would just go free. Don't confuse a free tasting / sample / limited use with the actual product.]]> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130517/09430123119/eu-commission-sued-refusing-to-reveal-trade-agreement-documents-they-shared-with-lobbyists.shtml#c170 Mon, 20 May 2013 07:07:46 PDT http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130517/09430123119/eu-commission-sued-refusing-to-reveal-trade-agreement-documents-they-shared-with-lobbyists.shtml#c170 http://www.techdirt.com/blog/casestudies/articles/20130508/06065623001/new-hope-how-going-free-to-play-brought-redemption-to-star-wars-mmo.shtml#c226 Mon, 20 May 2013 07:05:05 PDT http://www.techdirt.com/blog/casestudies/articles/20130508/06065623001/new-hope-how-going-free-to-play-brought-redemption-to-star-wars-mmo.shtml#c226 http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130517/08324323118/trade-group-representing-many-large-companies-claims-that-exceptions-blind-would-cast-aside-copyright.shtml#c33 Mon, 20 May 2013 06:59:25 PDT http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130517/08324323118/trade-group-representing-many-large-companies-claims-that-exceptions-blind-would-cast-aside-copyright.shtml#c33 http://www.techdirt.com/blog/casestudies/articles/20130508/06065623001/new-hope-how-going-free-to-play-brought-redemption-to-star-wars-mmo.shtml#c222 Mon, 20 May 2013 06:59:13 PDT http://www.techdirt.com/blog/casestudies/articles/20130508/06065623001/new-hope-how-going-free-to-play-brought-redemption-to-star-wars-mmo.shtml#c222
Stupid fucking troll still doesn't get it.

30 percent paying is still better than less than 30 percent paying. You always assume that anything less than 100% paying=failure. It doesn't matter if 90% are "freeloaders" as long as the 10% (or whatever percent) that pay are enough to make the thing profitable, AND is still better than where they were before.]]> http://www.techdirt.com/blog/casestudies/articles/20130508/06065623001/new-hope-how-going-free-to-play-brought-redemption-to-star-wars-mmo.shtml#c204 Mon, 20 May 2013 06:58:57 PDT http://www.techdirt.com/blog/casestudies/articles/20130508/06065623001/new-hope-how-going-free-to-play-brought-redemption-to-star-wars-mmo.shtml#c204 http://www.techdirt.com/blog/casestudies/articles/20130508/06065623001/new-hope-how-going-free-to-play-brought-redemption-to-star-wars-mmo.shtml#c185 Mon, 20 May 2013 06:57:01 PDT http://www.techdirt.com/blog/casestudies/articles/20130508/06065623001/new-hope-how-going-free-to-play-brought-redemption-to-star-wars-mmo.shtml#c185 In the end, they turned to FTP after subscribers almost vanishing.

We can argue about when they should have turned to FTP, but the fact is that the game had an amazing launch player-wise and since the lack of players on subscriptions are the main reason why FTP works, that is not what was needed here!]]> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130517/09430123119/eu-commission-sued-refusing-to-reveal-trade-agreement-documents-they-shared-with-lobbyists.shtml#c155 Mon, 20 May 2013 06:54:10 PDT http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130517/09430123119/eu-commission-sued-refusing-to-reveal-trade-agreement-documents-they-shared-with-lobbyists.shtml#c155 http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130517/06185923116/rice-university-professor-skynets-gonna-take-ur-jerbs.shtml#c894 Mon, 20 May 2013 06:53:15 PDT http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130517/06185923116/rice-university-professor-skynets-gonna-take-ur-jerbs.shtml#c894
Feeling empathy, writing books, imagining, admiring art, feeling regret or any other human emotion, and various patterns of thought are things we don't know how to make machines do yet. The fact that humans can do those things shows that it's possible for things to do those things, therefore it's possible in principle for us to design things that can do those things. We just need to figure out how.]]> http://www.techdirt.com/blog/casestudies/articles/20130508/06065623001/new-hope-how-going-free-to-play-brought-redemption-to-star-wars-mmo.shtml#c174 Mon, 20 May 2013 06:52:39 PDT http://www.techdirt.com/blog/casestudies/articles/20130508/06065623001/new-hope-how-going-free-to-play-brought-redemption-to-star-wars-mmo.shtml#c174 http://www.techdirt.com/blog/casestudies/articles/20130508/06065623001/new-hope-how-going-free-to-play-brought-redemption-to-star-wars-mmo.shtml#c163 Mon, 20 May 2013 06:51:50 PDT http://www.techdirt.com/blog/casestudies/articles/20130508/06065623001/new-hope-how-going-free-to-play-brought-redemption-to-star-wars-mmo.shtml#c163 http://www.techdirt.com/blog/casestudies/articles/20130508/06065623001/new-hope-how-going-free-to-play-brought-redemption-to-star-wars-mmo.shtml#c154 Mon, 20 May 2013 06:51:41 PDT http://www.techdirt.com/blog/casestudies/articles/20130508/06065623001/new-hope-how-going-free-to-play-brought-redemption-to-star-wars-mmo.shtml#c154
1) AC above has it right; this doesn't mean EA has learned anything.

2) I think most publishers understand that free *can* work - it is just that many times they either a) aren't certain that it *will* work or b) believe they can make more money with a pay-to-play model. In this case, EA probably knew beforehand that a free to play model would have more accounts, but that wasn't what they were interested in.

What they wanted was to replicate the success of WoW, which made money hand over fist. The goal was to attract a paying subscriber base, which would have significantly more revenue per account than a free-to-play/advertising based model. Now, with that said WoW still made more money than any video game ever. The question EA asked (and we should be asking) is this: would WoW have made more money for Blizzard free-to-play or subscription based?

For their part, Blizzard firmly believes that they would have made less money without paid subscriptions. Free can work, but so can paid.

EA's goal was that high-profit setup. They failed in that aim, and the adjustment is just moving from an unsuccessful fee model to a relatively more successful advertising one.]]> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130517/08324323118/trade-group-representing-many-large-companies-claims-that-exceptions-blind-would-cast-aside-copyright.shtml#c21 Mon, 20 May 2013 06:49:51 PDT http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130517/08324323118/trade-group-representing-many-large-companies-claims-that-exceptions-blind-would-cast-aside-copyright.shtml#c21 http://www.techdirt.com/blog/casestudies/articles/20130508/06065623001/new-hope-how-going-free-to-play-brought-redemption-to-star-wars-mmo.shtml#c152 Mon, 20 May 2013 06:49:43 PDT http://www.techdirt.com/blog/casestudies/articles/20130508/06065623001/new-hope-how-going-free-to-play-brought-redemption-to-star-wars-mmo.shtml#c152 pretty shitty.]]> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130514/15163123086/did-paul-duffys-wife-admit-that-duffy-was-engaged-interstate-extortion-facebook.shtml#c870 Mon, 20 May 2013 06:48:59 PDT http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130514/15163123086/did-paul-duffys-wife-admit-that-duffy-was-engaged-interstate-extortion-facebook.shtml#c870
Especially impressive when you consider that at the same time that she is blindly ignoring the minors she considers as being protected are generally more skilled at aquiring porn than the adults they extorting.]]> http://www.techdirt.com/blog/casestudies/articles/20130508/06065623001/new-hope-how-going-free-to-play-brought-redemption-to-star-wars-mmo.shtml#c142 Mon, 20 May 2013 06:44:06 PDT http://www.techdirt.com/blog/casestudies/articles/20130508/06065623001/new-hope-how-going-free-to-play-brought-redemption-to-star-wars-mmo.shtml#c142
Now go over to the dark side, ha, and look at the raw number of freeloaders: 1,700,000 to 500,000, or 3.4 : 1 ratio!

This is an established franchise with tons of fans (of all ages, some with actual cash!) over more than 3 decades, and STILL can't get over 30 percent paying, 70 percent freeloaders!

So, NO, still don't see "FREE" working the way you claim.]]> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130515/05513523093/suburban-express-goes-double-nothing-their-aggressive-behavior.shtml#c126 Mon, 20 May 2013 06:41:10 PDT http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130515/05513523093/suburban-express-goes-double-nothing-their-aggressive-behavior.shtml#c126