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Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Don't Access EA Access

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - It's EA Access... into your wallet. (And your soul.)

Apparently, Electronic Arts is having a new subscription service exclusive to the Xbox One. Since they're totally not snubbing Nintendo, they also offered it to Sony's PlayStation 4. They said no. But Microsoft said yes.

So the service is called "EA Access". Here's what gamers think about it:

GameFAQs poll 5587 showing gamers overwhelmingly do not like EA Access.
To be fair, I voted the last option without knowing what EA Access was. But I know now!
For $5 a month or $30 a year (note the implicit assumption here is that you wouldn't want to take advantage of this for more than half the year) you get access to three key features:

  1. "Play First" — Play a real (digital) EA game (as opposed to a demo) for five days before it comes out, then buy the game to continue if you're not done by then. Keep in mind EA doesn't consider being limited to one mode only as a demo.
  2. "Discounts" — 10% (or $6 per game) discount on digital purchases of EA games on the Xbox One.
  3. "Vault Access" — The games you can play (digitally) for free as an EA Access member. These currently are Madden NFL 25, FIFA 14, Peggle 2, and Battlefield 4. But there are more to come.
It's not the most inspiring set of features. It doesn't help that EA arbitrarily can exclude certain games from EA Access features, such as Titanfall (scroll to the bottom). People have noted that the games showcased are old, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. What is a bad thing is that many of EA's games are just annualized releases, and that's what EA Access primarily will be full of. EA is going after the dudebro market here. If you're an EA fan (what are you doing at KoopaTV? We hate EA!) then you probably already have the games in The Vault.

Since Sony declined (since it's not such a good value) to host this, perhaps EA will start snubbing Sony the same way they snub Nintendo?

You can tell in the Terms of Service that the way EA gets most of the money here is basically following a Free-To-Play model: They give you games for "free" (or for a fee in this case?) and then suck you dry with 10% off DLC across their games. You can also notice this is entirely digital, so EA is doing their part to kill physical distribution. Which you might not have any problem with.

What I can totally see as problematic is this line in the Terms of Service:
"In particular, Vault Titles are subject to change and may be removed, and the online services for certain Vault Titles may be discontinued. In the event that EA changes the EA Access Services, including the removal of Vault Titles or discontinuation of online services for certain Vault Titles, we will provide thirty (30) days advance notice to you by posting a notice on http://www.ea.com/eaaccess."
Gamers are the same group of people who continually (although I'm thankful for it from a view count perspective) are commenting about how they're done and angry with Nintendo systems after Nintendo gave an almost ninety (90) day advance notice that Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection would be discontinued. I'm personally fine with people boycotting EA for any possible reason, but could it be for them killing their employees or providing shitty customer service? Then again, maybe it's legitimate that EA is killing off the second-hand gaming market by only licensing you digital games that they can and will take away at a month-long moment's notice. The same games that you paid a lot of non-refundable DLC for.

But that's okay. That's your time to be suckered into buying the next annual installment!


You can be suckered into reading KoopaTV's next daily installment of KoopaTV articles for the low, low price of... FREE! And by can, that really means... you shall. You have no choice. Sorry! You're entered into another year-long KoopaTV contract, bundled with your other favourite TV channels like MSNBC, Al Jazeera, and The Blaze. If you want to protest, contact KoopaTV's customer service department in the comments section.

6 comments :

  1. Ooh yay KoopaTV + The Blaze in a bundle. I'm in.
    Okay, is EA just TRYING to get people to boycott them?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I would love it if they were trying.

      (Hey maybe we actually should try these bundle things. ...Or at least get some affiliates.)

      Delete
    2. Affiliate with The Blaze, and get Glen Beck to *try* to write Nintendo-related blog posts?

      Delete
    3. ...As a matter of fact...

      ...We might have something in the works that might please you.

      Delete

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