GOG/CD Projekt are not being bought by EA

[owsf2000]

Apparently I missed a short lived rumour yesterday about EA supposedly buying GOG/CD Projekt. Due to how viral it got, the founder of the company came forth pretty quickly and put it to rest by denying anything of the sort going on - and that the paystub used by the original leaker of the news to prove him being an employee is fake.

Great. Happy to hear. Would be rather stupid for them to sell to be honest.

But at the same time I laugh at some people's comments about the issue, for instance "Yeah right. As if CDPR would ever sell to EA. A company that's been praised for its DRM free games, that do not try to milk the consumer using cheap DLC tactics, sellout to a company that won the, what was that thing? The worst company award? Thrice?"

Yeah. That's a reason to believe people don't change amirite?

Minecraft.

Comments

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

This here is the first I've heard of this rumor. Glad it's false. Hope it forever remains false.

However, do I believe it's absolutely beyond the realm of possibility that it'll ever be true? Of course not. Despite what all the "Hurr, CDPR is so great and they'd never sell out to an obvious turd like EA, durr, because they love the consumer" bunch is saying, we both already know that even CDPR itself isn't (http://kane-magus.livejournal.com/734405.html) completely (http://kane-magus.livejournal.com/765446.html) spotless (http://kane-magus.livejournal.com/773351.html) to begin with, so, no, I don't think it's inconceivable that they might someday do something completely and utterly brain-dead in the future, like sell out to EA.

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

And yeah, all you have to do is look at Notch and Mojang (http://kane-magus.livejournal.com/725727.html) as an example of how just because a company used to be cool at some point in the past, it doesn't mean that company will forever remain cool.

Or... you could also just look at all the companies that did sell out to EA, such as BioWare (http://kane-magus.livejournal.com/tag/bioware) and the rest (http://kane-magus.livejournal.com/495575.html). The first one or two companies that sold out to EA might deserve a pass, but after three or more additional companies got bought by EA and then almost immediately started going to shit afterward (and they all start going to shit, always, without exception), after that, the responsibility starts to shift more to the owners of companies to know beforehand that selling their companies out to EA is a really terrible idea. They'd have to be utterly blind, deaf, and stupid not to know that, by this point. Unless, of course, said owners of said companies actually no longer give a single shit about the companies themselves and just want to take the money and run, as seems to have been the case with a lot of the more recent sell outs, such as the BioWare doctors (though they, of course, blamed it on fans (http://kane-magus.livejournal.com/602143.html), and not on EA, that they couldn't hack it anymore). In that case, well... they were probably already on the verge of going to complete shit even without EA's help.

As such, if CDPR (or any other company, for that matter) were to sell out to EA in the future, it would be pretty much entirely on their heads as to the outcome, because they can't not know that selling to EA is an extremely shitty idea. EA themselves, at this point, just can't seem to do any better if they tried. Sure, they've claimed in the past to want to try to be better, and a lot of people even swallow that lie, hook, line, and sinker, and yet, they're still horrid shit. It's like EA simply doesn't know how to not be horrid shit, even if they wanted to not be horrid shit (and I am not at all convinced that EA gives even the remotest of fucks as to whether they're horrid shit, really, just so long as enough people keep sucking on that sewer pipe to which the horrid shit that they spew out is connected... and plenty enough people still do exactly that, of course).

[owsf2000.livejournal.com]

One thing I will say for CDPR, despite them adjusting GOGs stance on DRM right before releasing their second game so that the game could have DRM included on the initial launch, is that they had the right idea to augment their business by starting GOG. As when it comes down to it, GOG is just a big ass store. One that nets them lots of additional money. Imagine if Bioware had the foresight to do the same thing instead of selling out to EA to get some extra cash.

I'd argue pretty much every serious game dev should be doing this on one level or another. Some already do to various extents. I doubt there'd be much to NIS these days if they didn't have all the stuff in their own webstore - granted it's all their own stuff, but they use it to branch out into additional markets such as anime and they always have special collectors editions to encourage preorders of their products directly with them. Which nets them a larger slice of the pie by cutting out the other middlemen. (Gamestop, etc)

Of course, if they weren't such horrible DLC Whores I'd probably still be interested in ordering all their collectors editions at launch. They sure saved me a hell of a lot of money in their own twisted way.