I don’t really know why, maybe it’s the economy going down, greedy shareholders, or just big mistakes, but it looks like companies are on a “screw you” frenzy these days.

Captain Obvious

Let’s not be mistaken, companies are here to make money, and profits. We, as consumers, are here to buy their products. But, if the company wants to keep us captive to stick with their products, they need to create a strong relationship with their users, aka us. This mecanic is so simple that I’m even ashamed to re-explain it here. Apple, weither you like it or not, is the perfect exemple of this.

With social networks, like Facebook or Twitter, it has become really easy for a company to make their customers feel at home. Twitter is even more powerfull as you deal directly one-on-one with people from the company. I had very good user experience on Twitter with several big companies like Microsoft or Adobe.

Your scam is in another Castle

Of course, there are several levels of screwiness: some are just annoying, like the unskippable copyright warnings and ads before you can get to the menu of you newly acquired BluRay Disk, some are just blatant stupid, like the Netflix Summer Fiasco ™ (Stu Maschwitz wrote an excellent article about that) and some are just nasty rip-offs.

Blindness in the rough

As anybody, I know I can’t trust companies eye wide shut. There are very few of them that have my trust, either because I truely enjoy their products, or their human contact, or both. Apple is not one of them.

This very short list just became shorter. They have lost my trust, and for one of them (Canal+, french TV network ala HBO) it’s definitive. For the other, Epic Games, it will be very hard for them to win me back, but not impossible. First, let’s talk about facts.

Fandom of the Opera

Epic is a big game and middleware developer. It is known for the unbelievably powerfull Unreal Engine. Amongts hard core gamers it is also known for big game franchises such as Unreal Tournament and Gears of War.

They have a very good reputation thanks to a dedicated love for their community. Giving them tools to mod, adding content and tweaking their games, listening and most of all, being human and humble. I started coding because of them, creating an autorun UI for the CD where I put all the Unreal Tournament add-ons I downloaded, to share and install them easily at friends houses. I was around 15.

Epic just have shipped Gears of War 3, the last part of the Marcus Fenix story arc. The game, as most Epic games, was critically acclaimed, and truth is, it’s a very good game. From A to Z. Better than the 2 first opus.

Do Love Cash

But I began being suspicious as soon as I started playing. When customizing my multiplayer character, I noticed some dollar signs on gun skins. I mean, you had to pay to unlock content on the disk.

Wait what ?!

I paid 70€ for the game (collector edition), and I have to give even more money to unlock part of the game that is already on the disk ? WTF Epic seriously ? Ok, let’s calm down, and have a look at the price before ranting.

3€… For a single gun skin… That hurts !

You’ll need to buy the 45€ pack to unlock all the skins… you already bought by buying the game. Remember, they are already on the game disk. Worse, the game menu is filled with this locked content notified by a blinking $ sign ! Even crappy iPhone apps don’t do that: a menu filled with $ signs everywere.

I could understand this if the game was free-to-play, or sold at a discount price, but with a full 60€ / 70€ retail price, it’s just a big rip-off. They should have put the skins for sale on the market place a leave the menu alone.

Anyway, selling content that is already on disk is just fucking lame. Putting it right in front of our face it one stop lamer.

Achievement Unlocked

Now that you have spent 115€ (I haven’t) to buy the game and unlock it’s content, you’ll be glad to know that Epic joined the bandwagon of “Season Pass” download.

For a discounted price, you preorder a predefined number of DLC. The Gears of War 3 “Season Pass” is sold for 30€, and will give you access to the first 4 DLC they’ll release, granting you a neat 33% discount compared to the full DLC prices if bought standalones.

Of course the “Season Pass” was on sold the day of release. I won’t complain but releasing this 30€ add-on preorder on day of release is like asking your customers 30€ more when they just spent 70€. Give us some room to breath ! Wait a week or two ! Let us discover the game before asking you to give you more. We will want more, for sure, because the game is brilliant. But we won’t want more on day of release.

So, soon after (maybe a week) the first batch of DLC content was announced: 3 new maps, new skins and new options for the Horde Mode. Street price is 10€, free if you bought the “Season Pass”.

Still trusting Epic, despite the cheap move of custom skins, I bought the “Season Pass” and on November 1, I downloaded the DLC. 1,42mb of download later, I understand that these 10€ (and thus 1/4 of my “Season Pass” was to unlock even more content from the Game Disk. What the hell is going wrong with you guys ? How could you stand on such a cheap and rip-off move like that ? What is our trustworthy Cliff Bleszinsky saying about this ?

Absolutly all the content of this 10€ DLC is on disk. It was just locked away for no reason except money.

The BluRay Analogy

It’s as cool as if you had to buy the right to watch the bonus content of your heavily priced BluRay Disk. Now that BR Players are connected to the internet, they just have to add paypal on the firmware and here will we be. That would have no sens and get a big backlash. And that’s exactly what Epic is doing, execpt that it’s not a BluRay but a game. Market is smaller, so backlash is smaller too.

The same Epic that was so attached to it’s community, without prior warning backstabbed us. How such a turnaround could come so fast ? And why ?

And when you thought it couldn’t get any worse

The day the DLC was released, Epic had a small conference announcing the next waves of content coming for Gears. And guess what, the only valuable thing in the DLC, the maps, are going to be available for free later this month.

Wait What Again ?

Giving stuff for free is nice and kind, but not announcing that this free stuff is what you had your fanbase buy few hours before, just after they discovered that it’s content was already on the disk, making them realise that they paid for something they already paid for.

It’s like a double hit combo. You buy something you already bought, and then you get the news that you’ll get most of it for free three weeks later…

Sure the “free” version will be limited to versus online mode (if you are not host), whereas the “paid twice” versions are available for all game modes. But let’s be honest, most of us bought the pack for the maps, and mostly to play in versus. I was already disappointed with the lack of content for a 10€ DLC pack, but now, it’s not disappointement anymore, it’s just sadness and anger.

Last but not least, the DLC was already on disk, but not in an unfinished beta form. Proof is that if I create a game with a DLC map, anyone having the game without the DLC can join, without downloading anything, nor patch. Nice touch !

Maybe you’re one dev guy from Epic reading this, and feeling downed by such criticizm on some marketing bullshit you are not involved with. I feel your pain. The game is really great. But let’s face it, you’ll need to make a big move to get back on your pedestal.

Right now you’re like this fancy girlfriend we just dumped because she cheated on us. It may have been a one night cheat stand, and we may want you back, but you’ll have to be excused. And that won’t be easy.

If you want to talk about it, my Gamertag is on top of this page, and you’ll find my email here.