Cheapening Intellectual Property

EA's David DeMartini, Senior Vice President of Global eCommerce and head of the Origin service, stated this about Steam sales recently:


 "I just think it cheapens your intellectual property. I know both sides of it, I understand it. If you want to sell a whole bunch of units, that is certainly a way to do that, to sell a whole bunch of stuff at a low price. The gamemakers work incredibly hard to make this intellectual property, and we're not trying to be Target. We're trying to be Nordstrom."

It's no secret that I'm a fan of Valve.  Aside from their wonderful games, they made perhaps the first viable digital distribution platform, tying it in with a social platform.  EA's shot across the bow flatly states that they feel that Steam's model of sales is killing intellectual property values.  While it's true that they've left me with quite a backlog of games, the fact is that I've bought games that I've had little to no interest in.  Here are five things I think are deflating the industry IP value before Steam's sales can even be considered.






1) Market Saturation



More games are released each year than any single gamer can feasibly ever actually play.  Sure, many are terrible games meant to make a quick buck for the studio, but the fact is, the market is saturated to the point that gaming studios are being axed by publishers for not churning out the next Halo.  I don't care that you spent millions marketing a game to me -- I already have nearly two hundred games I need to get to, and there are better games than the latest Saint's Row: Hitman Tony Hawk Guitar Hero's Call of Duty Halo Edition Twenty-Seven.  Your game isn't worth the $60 you want to hit me with, simply because I haven't finished SRHTHGHCODHE 25 or 26 yet.  That's not even accounting for the actual playability of the title, where you're trying to charge me the same for a title I'm done with in 5 hours as one I'm done with in 40.  While EA likes to kill their titles a specified time after launch to prevent just this, it's poor form and generally customer unfriendly.
MMOs have contributed significantly to the saturation, simply because the amount of content in a single game is staggering.  There's also the question of what would be more enjoyable -- progression in one's MMO of choice, or playing the newest title.

2) The indie industry (and indie publishers)
The barrier to entry in creating a game is getting lower every day, to the point where there are significantly more games that have nothing to do with the big-name publishers or their $60 price collusion.  Mobile apps have been a wonderful example of this, and players are buying more content than EA's 5 hour titles for less than a third of that set price.  They're also doing everything you're trying to do better than you, from valuable (and cheap) DLC to game updates.  Minecraft is another example, bringing a completely independent game to market for much less money and with much higher profit levels than many EA titles could dream of.
Indie publishers are even taking the ball away from EA and Activision and playing themselves.    Apple and Valve have been two of the better examples, bringing games to market that EA and Activision would never in their right minds greenlight, both to make the games with huge marketing budgets stand out more and to make sure you're paying their set price.
Kickstarter has revolutionized the industry, allowing even big-budget titles to be brought to market with little to no publisher say.  It's meant that EA and Activision are becoming significantly more irrelevant, even as they fight over market share.
I also count the mod scene in this -- volunteers often make better game content than their actual creators.

3) Milking intellectual properties
One of the most recent articles I recall reading is how Neversoft, king of destroying a license, has been delegated a Call of Duty title.  Activision is the shining example of taking a beautiful intellectual property and dismembering it for a quick infusion of cash.   They've destroyed Guitar Hero, Tony Hawk, and Call of Duty, all the while bringing plenty of shovelware movie license games to market.  Not only does this contribute significantly to the over-saturation of the market, but it also keeps new gamers from being able to easily tell the good ones from the bad at a glance, significantly devaluing each property used to the point where gamers want nothing to do with a series any longer.

4) Overvaluation of old IP
By trying to murder the used game market, and trying to keep retail prices of games relatively steady years after release, EA is actually reducing the value of their new titles.  The new Dragon Age selling for just as much as the old one reduces the odds that I'll actually purchase an old game that's simply sitting on your servers -- and it tells me that the new one isn't enough of an upgrade to merit it being one of my yearly purchases.
We get it.  You want us to keep paying for a product at the full MSRP.  You also want to fleece us on DLC that's not particularly worth it. You've priced yourself out of sales.  Congratulations.

5) Buggy initial releases
If you want me to buy a title that costs $60 the week of release, make sure it works perfectly out of the box.  The Elder Scrolls series (and now the Fallout series) are wonderful examples of this -- I know better than to touch anything using a Bethesda or Bioware engine until its Game of the Year edition has hit the streets, has been patched as much as it ever will be, has been modded as much as it possibly can be, and it's discounted past $20.  If I don't wait, I know there will be parts of the game that simply do not work at all, or are so grueling and horrible that I'll want to claw my eyes out.

What do you think of EA's sidelong nastygram aimed at Steam sales?