By the pound

Take a look at that screen capture above from my Steam client downloads tab.

Steam is in the middle of their Holiday sale and I decided to take advantage of a deal from BioWare on a 3 game bundlefor their signature franchise, Bioshock.  For $15 I got the original Bioshock game, Bioshock 2 and the latest Bioshock Infinite. 

$15 is a quite a deal considering Bioshock Infinite alone was going to leave you $60 poorer.  Of course that feeds into my assertion that any game that can offer as much as an 80% markdown less than a year after release wasn't worth the original price. 

Some would say that's why Call of Duty titles never seem to drop in price, I think it's just Activision's greed.

Perhaps game publishers are selling by the pound these days.  Case in point, my little screen capture.

Back in 2007 when Bioshock was originally released you were going to pay around $40 and for that you ended up with a DVD or a few CD's totaling up to just under 4GB of install files.  3 years later when BioShock 2 came out that number almost doubled to over 7.5 GB.  While the sequel was panned for being a pale copy of the original the extra space was likely taken up by the new multiplayer component of the game.  

It did cost more but I believe it had nothing to do with the quality of the game or development costs...

Fast forward to 2013 and the much hyped and much overpriced BioShock Infinite.  Critically acclaimed but almost instantly discounted from its $60 price.  For that money we ended up with 15 GB of installation files.

So if the average game in 2007 was $30 to $40 and by 2013 it's up to $60 then the only conclusion I can make is that games are now being sold by the pound. 

As we all know bits are very heavy.  So it stands to reason that if a game has more of them you'll have to pay more.

This is also how Steam can have such great sales.  They bundle more games (bits) together and thus can discount the price.  You know, just like those family size bags of Doritos are actually cheaper per chip than the smaller bags...

See, now I completely understand what publishers are thinking when they charge $60 for a crappy game!  They're selling them by the pound!

............No, I don't actually believe that.

BF4's broken and EA's shareholders want blood

If this isn't poetic justice I don't know what is...

It seems EA has finally ticked off someone other than their customers.  In a filing Tuesday (Dec 17, 2013) A class action suit was brought against EA by shareholders of the company who purchased its stock between July 24th and December 4th of this year.

The suit is being brought because....

"The complaint charges Electronic Arts and certain of its officers and directors with violations of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. ...

...The complaint alleges that during the Class Period, defendants issued materially false and misleading statements highlighting the purported strength of the Company’s rollout of version 4 of its all-important Battlefield video game series..."

In other words the plaintiffs believe that EA knew they had huge problems with Battlefield 4 but covered it up to boost their stock price.  Worse, when EA had to redirect all its resources to fixing their flagship game it caused other releases to be delayed which hurt sales.  The plaintiffs contend that all of this ultimately caused as  much as a 28% devaluation of their stock. 

It's unlikely the suit will get far unless there's concrete proof of a deception and not just inept management.  We're talking about shares of stock here after all  which are volatile instruments to begin with.

This also does nothing for the millions of EA customers who've suffered through the past 2 months with an overpriced and flawed purchase. 

I can't say I'm surprised that someone wanted to sue EA over BF4, what I am surprised by is that it was their shareholders and not their customers.

If I've said it once I've said it 1000 times.  Never buy anything based on hype.  That includes games, movies and especially securities. 

If you're a shareholder you need to visit the following site by February 15th, 2014 to join the class action.

http://www.rgrdlaw.com/cases-electronicartsinc.html

Good luck!