Valve want TF2 maps to be free
The Team Fortress 2 maps we heard about are still on their way, and Valve desperately want them to be free for everyone that has already laid down the money for the original game. Is it beyond their control though?
Speaking to Eurogamer, Vice President of Marketing for Valve, Doug Lombardi, said:
“The maps will come to the console versions. There’s a bit of work that makes sense for us to bundle them up and release them as packs. For free, definitely, as much as we can. You know, we don’t have full say over that, but we have some say over how that works. So, for us, for free is the way to go. The gamers play the game, they want to keep playing the game, so we’ve collected their fifty bucks at the start, and once they’re in the park, they can ride any ride they want in the park. So, for us that’s been the philosophy. For us, we see it as an investment on our next product. Gamers won’t hesitate when they see a game coming out from Valve. They’ll think ‘I’ve heard of this but will it be worth my money?’ We want to take that off the table.”
We’ve heard stories before about developers wanting to release free content for their games, with Microsoft point blank refusing. Gears of War and Halo 3 had to charge for the first three months, then the map pack would become free after that time. It was a compromise, but one that upset gamers who felt the move was unfair.
We’ve seen it happen with Arcade content too, as many developers have spoken out in the past saying they wanted to release themes and gamer pictures for free but simply were not allowed to. It’s a shame, but hopefully Microsoft will see sense and allow Valve to have their own way. We’ll keep you informed.
Microsoft, we’re watching you…
You know, you never really realize how many game developers want their content to be free until you sum it up like you did.
Interesting.
Boy, I really hate to defend Microsoft, and I’d love to have a bunch of free DLC, too, but the whole Live thing is a money-making venture, too. People think that the subscription should pay for everything, but in reality, none of us know what’s behind Live in terms of operating costs, revenue projections, future plans, etc. Everyone cries foul at pricing from arcade games, subscriptions, DLC, whatever and then claims it should be this or that, or free. But none of us know the real numbers behind all of this, or can really make educated guesses about how much anything _should_ be.
Imagine if you were running a store, and some vendor walked in, and wanted a bunch of shelf space to give their product away for free. That’s great for the vendor, but it doesn’t pay your bills. Maybe you do it once or twice, but if you’re going to do it on a regular basis, you need to plan ahead and account for that “loss”. Isn’t that reasonable?
I assume Microsoft has to invest resources into certifying, hosting, and maintaining availability of each piece of DLC, so why shouldn’t they want a little something for their effort?
I live in europe, so the live service is already pretty shitty compared to the US. I’m happy to pay for live.
Live gold doesn’t pay for online multiplay servers as games are p2p based. So I guess they at least pay for the fileservers hosting content, being video, game, theme or whatever.
I assume MS gets some money for each copy of the game sold.
So what right do they have to charge money again for 3rd party content if they already been paid in several ways. In this case I would see they are just greedy.
First off, they own the delivery method. You get that 3rd party content through their service. If it was directly from the developers somehow, it might be a different matter. If you owned the delivery method (and assumed all costs associated with it) I would think you would want to be paid too.
Secondly, as you said, MS gets a cut of every game licensed for their console. You seem to have no problem with that. If a developer chooses to extend their game via DLC, why doesn’t MS deserve a cut of that as well? Because ‘they already have enough?’ What company ever has ‘enough’ money?
In your scenario, what would stop a developer from releasing a game with one level for $20, giving MS 1/3 of what they would normally make and releasing the rest of the levels via DLC for free? That reminds me of people who sell stuff on eBay for $1 and then add $24.95 (or more) for shipping, thus depriving eBay of most of their fee, since they don’t charge on the shipping cost.
I think your scenario of 20$ for a game is far fetched, developers wouldn’t make any money at all out of that.
As regarding the DLC, I agree that MS owns the delivery method, but I’m paying for that delivery method. Combined with the fact that MS gets a fee for a game, I think it’s not justified for MS to ask for money for 3rd party content.
Agreed. $20 was a silly number. How about $50 for a game that would normally be $60? Now MS makes 17% less on the licensing fee. (I assume the fee scales like that, but of course, I don’t know) The developer is making less money, too, but they’re already interested in offering free content, so they already have a price point in mind.
The bottom line again is that this is a profit center for MS (or it’s supposed to be - I don’t know how profitable it is) and it’s not in their interest to create loopholes so that they can make less money.
no bulge in those pantz. a sackless void. keep looking at xbox live like a store, and that is exactly what it is going to turn into. i guarantee.
there is a huge difference between money making and profit maximization. one of them screws the customer. unfortunately, most video game customers are already accustomed to taking it up the ass, so of course they will try to screw us all. nice job it0, taking care of the actual debate. someone has got to get incensed though.
Well, it *is* a store in a sense. Yes, it’s a gathering place, a messaging interface, and to some extent, an information portal. But we all know the reason it exists is to generate revenue on the stuff that MS and others are *selling* to us.
I agree with you that there’s a difference between making money and screwing the customer, but too many people seem to assume that we are getting screwed. Based on what? Again, does anyone know what it actually costs to maintain the Live service? Does anyone know what the profit really is? How many servers does it take to run it? 10, 100, 1000, 10000? How many people? How many datacenters? What about the development of the spring and fall updates? How much does that cost?
All I’m saying here is that people who don’t know any of these numbers are all to quick to jump to the conclusion that we are getting screwed and/or that we should be getting more than we are now. Maybe that’s true, maybe not. Until I see the numbers proving that I’m getting screwed, I’ll be content paying 10.9 cents per day (13 month card for $42.99 and free shipping on buy.com) for the Live service and the occasional *optional* DLC/XBLA game that I want.
xbox live’s original intention was to be an online gaming community. yes, because of the irresponsibility and stupidity of people, it is now TRANSFORMING INTO a store. and to be honest, i don’t give a shit watching you all get raped buying movies or whatever, but you getting raped on dlc for games is directly affecting the community. we pay for xbox live to offer organizations like valve an opportunity to breathe new life into a game, not to line m$’s fucking pockets. not that the orange box was not a great deal for what you got, but most of that shit was years old, and they may feel like they owe us a little more. everybody pays m$. everybody knows they are testing the rape waters. stick a plug up your ass if you have to, BUT DON’T GET RAPED! valve wants to offer us something for free, and you are quibbling about the hosting costs m$ is having to float? what the hell are you smoking?
also, anybody notice they only gave us half a game with undertow for the live outages? they are now charging 400 m$ points for the rest of it. but they probably didn’t have the game finished when they originally released it. anyone who fails to see the pattern here had better wake up and smell the shit stain on the wall.
C’mon Pantz! It’s freakin’ Microsoft man. I’m sure they make enough off of movies, tv shows, and xbox arcade games. Gamer pics, themes and maps couldn’t be that much of a loss.
I know, I know, they have tons of money, so they should give us stuff for free. It’s a business with shareholders to be accountable to. If we all owned stock instead of XBOX’s, we’d want MS to charge as much as they could for everything.
(For the record, I do not own MSFT stock.)
i do and i own a 360 too and truts me theirs truth in the fact they have to make shareholders happy
also considering the 360 devision and the entertainment division only recently made their first profits… so of course their going to charge for the things they provide to the 360 players.
won’t someone think of the stockholders! for the love of god!
lol
I didn’t think you did. I don’t know, I just feel that some things they could charge for, and others they wouldn’t. That’d be fair enough no? Atleast all of the “video game” material DLCs because it is first and foremost a video game console. And then all that other stuff (like the video content) charge away
(I’m gald that you kept it civil by the way Pantz, sorry if I came off a little strong.)
last i checked their was free stuff on XBL … developers have a big impact on whats free and whats not, but if their going to release it for free i can gaurantee they would have to foot the bandwidth costs for those downloads…
which Valve won’t want to do and will then cry foul and say that microsoft “forced” them to charge
Yep, seems to me that it would be fair if a dev wants to offer something for free, then they should foot the bill for Microsoft’s costs, or make some other arrangement (future consideration, whatever.)
Free DLC vs. Not Free DLC.
The XBLA million dollar debate.
Personally, I feel that there are really two types of DLC for games. Your standard fare, such as gamer pics or themes and something more premium, like game content (i.e. maps).
I feel that simply buying the game disc and playing it once should entitle you to d/l a few pics and a theme or two for that same game.
Example: I buy NHL 2008, I should be able to choose one gamer pic package at no charge.
Premium DLC, like new maps, require no more/less work than creating the maps the disc shipped with. This type of DLC can substantially add to the game, through longevity or a new story line (in Oblivion’s case at leeast). I have no issue paying for this, as no matter how you slice it, this is EXTRA content than what you paid for.
I don’t think this is a totaly unreasonable idea.
“Premium DLC, like new maps, require no more/less work than creating the maps the disc shipped with. ”
no more/less work? what the hell does that mean?
It means that no matter what stage of development the game is in, the work needed to produce a map or multiple maps is the same.
No more. No less.
From alpha to beta to final release, the same amount of time/effort are going into the maps.
The question is not If you are willing to pay for premium DLC, but if the developer doesn’t charge you for it, why should MS and why should you have to accept that?
MS is the middle man in all DLC transactions. They didn’t create the content, but since they are delivering it to us they are acting like any retailer would. Put their own spread on the pricing to generate a profit. In other words, Captialism!
I just don’t think its too much to consider free gamerpics for a game we’ve already bought, but new maps/chapters/levels/storylines……anythign that will MATERIALLY ADD to the game and has been created/added after the fact are fair game to be charging for.
Yeah, good point. There’s another thing going on here too - supply and demand. If people stopped buying, MS would stop selling. There’s a saying, “vote with your wallet.” The way I see it, people are. And they are voting ‘yes’ to paying for Live, DLC, XBLM, XBLA, etc.
This isn’t a municipal utility like the electric company that has a monopoly. We all have the option of not buying any of this stuff. We could play on the other systems where more stuff is free. But we choose this platform, despite the fact that in the long run, it may be more expensive.
I think he’s saying that whatever a developer spends to create new maps during initial development for the game’s release, would be more or less the same later on. So, for example, if a dev spends $1M to create 10 maps, that’s an average of $100k per map. So if they want to release 3 new maps later on, it will cost them about $300k.
thanks, i follow.
ok, well, how about the scenario where created maps are withheld from the disc just so the dev can charge for it later as dlc? that seems to be the case most of the time, and something that most people have neglected to even see.
also, what if a dev suffers from the limitations of dvd-9, and they are unable to fit all of their content onto one disc. should they be FORCED to charge for the content that they had originally planned on including? and should we be forced to pay?
what game has held back maps to release as DLC later on? proof please. Link?
We’re not talking about the infamous 108K file to ‘unlock’ a fully jacked out golfer on Tiger Woods. We’re talking about full maps.
I think you’re taking it a bit to literal.
I believe when bungie was talking about the original new maps they mentioned something like this. It was along the lines of them having the map idea and such, but decided they either didn’t have the time or whatever so they’d release it later on.
Of course this doesn’t give you exactly what you’re looking for but its pretty much the same thing. I do agree, I doubt they’d sit down at a meeting and say “How many maps should we make? How about 15 and put 10 on the disc to ensure us some money later on?”
Interesting, I always wondered why some themes and gamerpics aren’t free and some are free. I usually stick to the free stuff.
You know, this ain’t politics.
We have NO say in what MS does(only through perhaps boycott do we have a say).
So those of us that have said we’d RATHER NOT pay for DLC should just shut up before we convince MS to charge! And Chris who IS a shareholder, argue your point
If you’d ever bought a Valve-game for PC, you would know that they constantly patch their games and add new content, FOR FREE.
If you bought Half Life 1, you would get Team Fortress, Half Life Deathmatch, later Counter-Strike and Deathmatch Classic (added later) and all those games have been upgraded with new maps for years, also without charging for them.
If you bought Counter-Strike:Source, your STEAM will have downloaded about three or four new/remade maps since release of the game, for free.
If you bought the Orange Box or TF2 for PC, you will get these maps , guess what, for free.
Epic Entertainment releases all of their additional content for free,too - but Microsoft forced them to charge for their GoW-Content.
Microsoft sux, charging for content and services that used to be free, without offering real benefits