EA “Gives Away” 1000s Of Free Games Due To No Server-Side Validation

Post by mesozoic » Mon, Oct 15, 2012, 10:07 PM UTC

ntkachov wrote: post #62

dkokelley wrote: post #51

Can this really be considered lost revenue? It's unlikely that all 1,000's of the "free" games were going to be purchased at the current price. You run in to the same questions with piracy. Were the pirates really going to pay if they couldn't pirate? The lost revenue should really only come from customers who would have paid the asking price but managed to get an illegitimate deal, plus whatever support and overhead…

Yes because some (most of the ones worth paying for) of the games require some sort of server. So every new player in a game is not free for EA. Giving away a game means they will lose money on this person if they play online.

Consider however you have to download Origin to get the games and play them. A feat they've been struggling to get gamers to do, so every gamer that got free games is actually worth a lot to them and probably wouldn't have bought any of these games anyway as they're mostly old and lame.

It's pretty much a win for EA which is why I expect they let it continue so long.

Post by milfot » Tue, Oct 16, 2012, 2:46 AM UTC

milfot wrote: post #79

dkokelley wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but I don't think that's relevant to the discussion. It's hard to quantify, but there is some set of those downloaders who at some point in the future would probably have bought one of the EA titles they received, so there is some actual lost revenue. I suppose that's their lesson for pushing bad code into production. But it shouldn't matter. Real loss isn't necessary for it to be a unethical (or worse, a crime…

Is it actually true that real loss isn't necessary to be unethical? You couldn't possibly provide an example? I am having trouble imagining such a situation. (I would argue in terms of importance, ethics > crime)

Yeah, that is a good point. I had this idea that it most ethical questions are to do with other people.

Like stonemetal alluded to, in a pretty esoteric sense you are harming yourself by bringing yourself into disrepute.. but that is just quibbling. Also I guess the 'scientific' method employed in marking papers is as a proof which you have not given. Though you may have done the groundwork it does not automatically follow that you are able to reliably produce the required results. You may also then be bringing the school into disrepute... but, probably not the central issue here.

I don't agree that EA's reward is diminished UNLESS people who would have otherwise bought these games did not (which I would then absolutely regard as stealing) and ASIDE from the very real argument about server time (which I would argue is a separate instance of theft).

I don't think the social contract argument holds much beyond the idea of patronage ie. I have a duty to support the content producer, but no such duty to allow him to profit. That is arbitrage, I may find it worth my while to allow it, but I have no duty to support it. In abstract Kant-ian terms (thanks for the link, jogged my memory of all those philosophy subjects I studied way back when) if all the world rejected arbitrage people would only make things that were really valued (in real terms, some over-production allows for innovation of course.. things are never so simple).

In fact, in the OP, he mentioned that on some boards people were justifying their actions by saying that they were taking back some of the money EA had taken from them over the years. This could be read as taking back the profits, or the arbitrage, which they no longer felt were justified given EA's continued mistreatment of their custom. (or, of course could be read as a petty way to make themselves feel ok about stealing).

Re: EA “Gives Away” 1000s Of Free Games Due To No Server-Side Validation

Re: EA “Gives Away” 1000s Of Free Games Due To No Server-Side Validation