Crytek decrees: “Free demos are a luxury that is dying…” Me: Peace out then

If you hold game demos near and dear to your heart, the tides are a changin’ in ways that just aren’t too friendly for consumers. First, a few weeks back EA announced that they were toying with the idea of charging $10-$15 for “premium demos”. Naturally, a fair share of gamers weren’t too pleased. But another developer has spoken out in favor of such things.

EA destroys Battlefield: Heroes with good ‘ol fashioned greed.

Online gaming is one of those things that can gain quite a loyal following. Look no further than WoW (World of Warcraft). WoW has one of the most devout user bases I’ve experienced in my short 22 years of life. But WoW isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. For those looking for a tad more variety and more casual game play (read: you don’t have to become completely entrenched), a worthy option was Battlefield: Heroes by EA. It is a great online shooter/war game that is basically a more realistic and earthly version of WoW. EA launched the game initially with a rather unique and instantly popular pricing structure structure — free play as much as you like with options to buy your way more power, health, prestige, etc for cheap.

If you had come to love Battlefield: Heroes and it’s open, free structure, sorry to say that it’s as good as gone. EA’s throwing down the all too familiar paywall. Making money is good and all, but company after company is taking an originally free product and later backtracking on the whole free thing leaving users pissed and the companies image tarnished…

Cablevision/Newsday trying to become irrelevant.

When trying to grow your business, especially one in this digital age with competitors cropping up by the hundreds if not thousands, shooting yourself in the foot with poor business decisions doesn’t seem like a very good way to continue rolling in the dough. For Newsday (which is owned by Cablevision) a paywall isn’t necessarily the best idea as many customers expect a free web portal, the way they are going about it is all wrong. The likely scenario would seem to be as such:

• Customers who already subscribe to Cablevision TV or Newsday print papers can access Newsday online for free.

• New customers who do not subscribe to either Cablevision or Newsday products will pay a $10/month fee

Seems reasonable for a paywall scheme does it not? Well, they got part of it right — current customers of Cablevision or Newsday do in fact get access to Newsday online for free. New to the Newsday online scene are ya? That’ll be $5 — per week. *rolls eyes*

Are they trying to kill themselves? If you block off new subscribers who simply don’t want Cablevision TV service or an actual Newsday print paper showing up at their door step by charging them for online access, they’re just going to go elsewhere. If your business — the newspaper industry — isn’t doing so hot, bringing in new customers to would seem like a pretty high priority. I guess Cablevision didn’t spend that long talking to newspaper industry sources when they originally purchased Newsday and admitted they had no idea on how to run a newspaper business. Mass defect coming soon.

TechDirt

Image Source