They wouldn't be having any of these issues if their products were affordable, or worth the money. I don't like buying second hand games, but if I can get a $40 game for $25 I'm probably going with the $25. The fact that 2 new games cost over $100 makes it difficult to buy more than 1 new game at a time.

Lower prices will increase profits.

See? the PC is the best gaming platform for corporate profits too -- because you load the game onto the hard drive and have a security key which can also be verified / validated online. So much for the "BOX" gamers and their array of rentable, shareable, disks. LOLOLOLOL If you think they are too expensive then why do box gamers buy 2 separate computers so they can game while PC gamers buy 1 computer. Plus the price comes down in a few months to usually half that. Just wait.

You know what doesn't make sense about this? The bias against the PC.

If games for consoles are rented or bought used at a 2:1 ratio, isn't the 20:1 ratio for piracy on computers (which have virtually no secondary market) a much much better outlet?

If the "Price is Right", I don't have an issue with such a feature.
In fact, you could even sell a discounted retail version w/o the "Final Boss".

If you game is "Good", folks will play it and buy the final boss.
If the game is not good, then folks will toss it aside and not buy the added content.

I can't tell you how much I hate paying $$$ for a game that turns out to be a dud.

If a game that is REALLY Good, then the price is WAY more than fair if you consider the time spent playing vs the cost of going out or doing other activities.

Why spend sixty bucks on a game you'll get tired of in 8 hours anyways.I used to rent games for the nes, then the snes, so its not like this is some new development. This is just corporate greed. Typically when something grows in popularity and is more mass produced the prices drop, not so with video games they have increased the prices and now they are wondering why their sales aren't where they want them to be.

gee epic games is full of fail uh? Really why are they even listened to anymore?

Did it occur to Epic that perhaps the average PC gamer, generally older than console gamers, has already played and continues to play better games than the console hits like Gears of War and Halo?
I know I have played better, much better.
Sure, your game is pretty and the voice acting is nice and all but it's just another shooter.
Give me something different and better and I'll pay $50 for it.
I paid $50 for Medieval II: TW and haven't regretted it ever.
It's loaded with replay value and I never feel cheated when I think of how much money I spent on it.
I've paid $50 for "good" games such as Gears of War and Crysis and continuously regretted it since after I finish it in a weekend. Also, I haven't even looked at the game box since I finished.
Give I'll sacrifice style over substance any day.
Or... I'll have both and play a game worthy of my $50 like Oblivion or Fallout 3.
Enough with believing your own hype, make better stuff. Your games are eminently playable, but I'm sorry they're just not that compelling and don't deserve to be any more than a $20 or $30 purchase for 10 hours. I don't care if your production costs more, code more efficiently or work harder on content.
Digital Download PC games should be cheaper.
You can forgo disc publishing and shipping costs and the inevitable RMA/replacement issues that go along with it, and you don't have to worry if Gamestop even bothers to have your game on the shelf.

The $50 price is a premium to play the game first and nothing more, get a hold of yourselves Epic, I don't need your mediocre but "console genius" crap anyway.

The best way to end PC piracy is online registration like an MMO and reduce costs by going through digital distribution. Unfortunately for the few of who have high-end enough machines to play these games but apparently no internet connection to activate them like an MMO you are out of luck.

What's next, are we going to do this with movies? If you wait until it hits Netflix you're going to have to download the ending for another $10?

GoW is a $30 pc game at best, if you can get more out of console gamers than congratulations, but I know something that's not worth it when I see it.

This idea sickens me. I would loathe this idea if it ever came to pass. This would be nothing like a subscription. This would be like a paid demo. And if you are not connected to the internet on your pc/console? Call them up? oh they are only open until 5pm est? Hey they are open late, and your call goes to india! I can just see how well that would work out.

Find that new awesome weapon? That will be $5, thank you.

this is nothing like extra content. Sure you can pay for extra maps or an expansion, maybe even pay for new content on a constant basis (mmo).

How pissed off would you be if your watching a movie and right before the big climax, a big screen pops up asking you to enter your credit card information.

Lets expand it to all products! I can see it now! Want to drive your car past 65,000 miles? That will be another $10,000 or we stop your car, take it back, and kick you in the balls.

On a similar note:
I don't so much mind the idea of pay-per level downloads.
It gives the developers something and it allows me to say "to hell with" a game that I'm not liking without spending all of the money on it.

This is a GREAT idea. Product manufacturers should all profit from the secondary markets around their products. Home builders should get a second, third, fourth profit from a home that is resold. Automobile companies in the US would be in much better shape if they got another chunk of money when that car was later resold or when someone wanted to add new value to the vehicle.

Seriously... this is outright jealousy. They want people to pay more money for a game because they have the ability to lease it. This tells me as many have said above that they have an issue with their profit structure if they are thinking of resorting to these tactics. It's okay... the market will take care of such companies. I have a feeling that the 'I bought the game' completion codes will simply travel around as the new pirate currency.

I think Michael Capps would be very dissapointented with the limited amount of people who would pay any amount for the final level of any game. Unless the whole game has had such a compelling story line you simply must know how it ends, there's no way anyone is going to care. I actually hate boss-fights anyway, especially in your traditional japanese role-playing game where the final boss has 27 different forms.

There is already a crack patch for it.........even before they thought of it.

[quote]and Capps blames the 20:1 pirated to non-pirated ratio as the reason why there is no Gears of War 2 on the PC./quote]

Load of BS. The reason there is no GoW 2 on the PC is because M$ is the publisher of this game and comments like this is only to increase XboX sales for those that want to play this crappy game.

If Epic actually released a game at the same time on multiple platforms (e.g. Fallout 3) your sales on the PC would be great, don't release a game over a year later on the PC (riddled with bugs that you wont fix) and expect "EPIC" sales!!!

20$ for a final boss code, go f*ck yourself

you're game was bought once, once it is bought, i can do whatever the hell i want with it and that includes selling it "used"

go ahead and try it, if crackers can crack yer whole game in 20 minz, it will take em 2 minz to crack your final boss

where do they hire these clowns, from f*ckn clown college?

Guess what the person who sells his first hand game to another person is likely to do with his cash.. Get a frigging new game, that's what. There's some sort of balance to this. This is corporate greed indeed. They should stop whining about used games market, and thank god as their games first needs to sell before they can be resold.

I love it kamkal!!! You said it the best!! I laughed out load! seriously!! Awesome points!!

most games if they suck end up costing 10 bucks in a bargain bin within 6 months anways, and there are more crap games than there are good ones!

games that are good still pull a good share of their first day price
for example, COD4 still sells for 50 bucks on steam and around 40 bucks in retail stores, if you are on steam you can usually tell which game sucks; it's the one that gets marked down after like two weeks!

take note EPIC, make good games and people will still buy them at 40-50 bucks!

I am a retail paying customer and I'm getting sick of this trend where you get the same thing, but pay more.

Pay for expansion packs, pay for weapons, pay for horse armor, now Epic wants you to pay for a boss?

I love games and the people who make them happen, but what pebble of idiocy has gotten into your brain-box that makes you think you can control the secondary market?

Ahhh, Hollywood! There's your cultural parasite right there.

these fools need to know who the f*ck is in charge here.

We the paying customer is in charge a-hole and you are DEPENDENT ON US, not the other way around son, we dont buy, you dont eat, get the drift?

Games are not a NEED, only a LUXURY and if you want our continued business i suggest you don't piss us off

sorry the audacity of this fool just hit a nerve.

Well....this shows that the gaming industry is getting really really close to just bluntly telling consumers

"now what we want you to do is just undue your belt, drop your pants.....good, now grab your ankles. Now please hold on tight while we show you just how much we care about customer service. We like to make sure that we always go that extra mile, and give our customers a little bit more than they were expecting. You can't imagine how good it feels to go out of your way, do that little bit extra and make it clear what's really important to us....what's that? oh....you're bleeding you say...no no terribly sorry i can't use any of that, you didn't pay for the unlock code but don't you worry, i don't mind a bit."

PC games have a 20:1 piracy to sales ratio? Well that should say something about the quality of the games then. More and more i've been unable to find demo's for newer PC games, which are kind of a must when you shell out $50-$80 a title and the majority are all eye candy. That being the big selling point more often than not now and anything shy of $500+ GPU and $400 monitor to take advantage of higher rez makes them a waste.

There are usually a handful of titles worth buying every year when they first get released...and alot of them have been around on console for 6-12 months already. Gee i wonder why PC sales are down you morons.

You pay for a game once..that should be it. No new content, no additional cost. Espcially not for something that has a subpar story and less than 20 hours of gameplay. Crysis warhead for example, is like 8 hours maybe, no where near worth it. The few times that i do buy games i get them on steam, and that's after i have already played the game for an hour or two to see if it's worth the cash.

gaming industry is like the music industry

run by publishing houses that rush crap games and put most of their resources into "marketing" the game so that drones will go out and buy it the first day even without a demo, and each game is a slightly modded version of some previous title

same thing happens in music, the "artists" are generally crap and they all sound and look alike, more noise than singing
the music publishers "market" the crap out of them and make people believe (power of suggestion) that yes this artist is "good" when in person they sound like a screeching cat


if a song or game is good, you know it the first time you play/hear it, the marketing machine doesnt have to "convince" you that it is good

get back to quality titles and people will shell out good money for them!!!!

ahhhh ok rants done.

While I am all for game developers recouping as much of their costs as possible, it would bother me in a big way if they would go to such lengths to cut out the rest of the industry.

How would movie renters feel if they had to pay an extra $2 charge to the movie studio to see the last 20 minutes to a movie they had just rented from Blockbuster?

How come the music industry isn't furiously stamping out used CD stores? Does the book industry have a problem with libraries?

Why not make some money by using advertisement where appropriate?
Honestly, if done right and seamlessly, I don't mind having a few adds or company logos inside my game.
As long as the combine aren't wearing uniforms with Nike swooshes anyway, but on the UI, it's fair game, I don't care.
On sports games, naturally I care even less.

A message for Mr. Micheal Capps.

Take a Top-Down view of the business. Control the Distribuition channels. Look at Blizzard for Quality Control. As for piracy, you cannot control it. I think it was Warner Bros that is now renting movies in China for a dime. Finally hit them that they can't control it.

In the next sentence ill just use crysis as an example because their sales numbers are known.

Mr Capps, if the piracy rate is 20:1 (witch btw, i think is much bigger worldwide, but lets use you numbers), and you game is 50$, , knowing that for example Crysis sold around 1 million copies the real question is:

How many copies of Crysis would be sold if the game costed only 2,5$ ?

You just needed 20 million copies to hit the same profit that you hitted with 50% a box. Head Digital Distribuition with a Top-Down horizontal aproach.

With Crysis a 5$ legal license, i bet it would pass the 50 million copies sold. And Crytek would more then doubled their profit.
Itunes is a great example in the music industry.

But no, continue to keep your head in the sand.

What these people are failing to realize is that used game sales DO support the industry. Yes not directly, as the developer doesn't really see money from people buying it second hand, but it keeps people interested in gaming.

It puts money back into the pockets of people who DO buy games new, and they continue on to buy even more new games. Do you know how many LESS new games would buy if I couldn't sell off my old ones?

I purchase a great majority of my games new, but I also will buy a title I missed at a used price. This may lead me to try out a new game franchise or developer that I would not have felt like "taking a risk" on at full price. An example of this is Need for Speed. I never bought a new version of Need for Speed until I was able to pick up a used copy cheap... then I thought "hey wow, this series isn't bad, I'm going to buy the next one". Which lead me on to buy Need for Speed: Carbon.

Used game sales DO support the industry, and they are only doing this out of greed.

You don't see automobile makers trying to implant special shut down computer chips into cars if you don't have a "code" that you get when you buy the car new. It's because if people couldn't sell their old cars, there would be a lot less people buying new ones.

There is no way that crackers won't find out how to circumvent their cute little trick and release it free of charge for illegal downloading. This sort of tactic would just be sabotaging game sales by alienating legitimate buyers and making cracked torrent versions more appealing and accessible. We've already seen this happen with SecuROM games like Spore.

This goes beyond just pirating a game instead of paying for it. When criminals offer a SUPERIOR product, at ZERO cost to the consumer, your business model is fucked. Go back to square one and start over.


Personally, I think there should be a move towards more episodic content like Bone or that Penny Arcade game. Get a complete playing experience for a reasonable price, and if you like it you keep buying the new stuff.

It seems to me he forgets that gaming in general is a luxury, especially in the current economy. If he tries to impede it by say targeting the rental/second hand market he's going to further alienate people playing games. Now should someone spend 50 - 60 dollars on a game when they can buy a DVD/Bluray disc for 20 - 30 dollars. If Epic chooses this model, or if say Microsoft pushes it for a future Xbox version, the real money for the competitors is to keep the market as it currently is to turn an even tidier profit.

I'd buy Crysis for 5$ It's not worth it to pirate. (others don't care) It's certainly not worth 50$. I did play a friend's copy of Oblivion for about 10 hours before I went out and purchased it. Hell I'd probably pay 10$ for Crysis just for the tech-demo-iness/benchmark-iness of it. I'd pay 20$-25$ if I thought it was any good. So maybe in a few years I'll pick it up. 50$ HA. I'll only pay 50$ for a 'special' or 'collectors' edition of a game I'm really into. (Diablo II as an example)

-Bounty