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Apex Legends - f2p Battle Royale out now (Xbox One, PS4 & PC)

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    Given Respawns long history working with EA and before that Activision I'm shocked that they're so comfortable with such blatant capitalist practices! Shocked I say!


    It'll be okay in the end, another 2-3 stumbles and EA will shut the studio down like they do them all in time...

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      Respawn is the new darling though, $100m+ per month from Apex before factoring in their Star Wars game. Bioware is probably the more obvious EA studio on the chopping block. Throwing everyone at Dragon Age 4 but will it save them.

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        I think 18$ is a fair price, though, because you're not paying for a skin.

        Take Warhammer figures. They're expensive, far more expensive (by a huge margin) than the raw plastic materials required to cast them and the cardboard of the box they're supplied in. That's because the sales of the products pay for the Warhammer shops & staff, and the wider infrastructure which exists to maintain the game. You can't just look at a single Space Marine model and say "that's not worth it"; you have to look at the sales across the entire hobby, which go into one pot. It's the same reason popcorn costs a fiver at the cinema for 20p of raw material.

        Apex is no different. When players sign up to Apex, there's no immediate fee. They don't have to pay a few pence for the bandwidth in each game, they don't pay monthly upkeep for the servers, they don't pay for the free content the game doles out, and they're not retroactively paying for the development that was required to make the game in the first place. They don't pay 20p each time they submit a tech support ticket. All of those things come out of the purchases they make. They may even be financing other EA games, or paying for the failure of Andromeda and Anthem.

        I'm not defending the lootbox shenanigans (I just don't personally buy lootboxes) but when it comes to things like that on a game people have played large amounts of for free, surely they've got to realise that they're shelling out for all the stuff they haven't yet paid for.

        I've no idea how much revenue Apex is making, or how much of that is profit. I suspect it's a lot. But similarly I don't know how much it cost to make, how much it costs to simply maintain (though that bit will be quite low) or how much money they're spending on development (though that will be quite high). However, they will know exactly how much they earn when averaged across the playerbase. That value will be low. Additionally, they have no idea how long the game will persist, and have an imperative to make back their money while it remains popular.

        I have zero patience for "double-dipping", i.e. games charging £40 then doing the lootbox-lambada to try and pull more money off players for something which feels like it just should've been present anyway. However, for free games, I just can't begrudge developers for this.

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          They were making over $100 million a month, although that's dropped off to $37 million in recent months and charging $18 a skin because a few people are mug enough to pay that much, not because it's worth it. It's massively more than they need for maintainance, support and development. Most of that money will go to share holders and the board of directors, not the people on a monthly salary.

          Last edited by MartyG; 20-08-2019, 18:21.

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            Originally posted by MartyG View Post
            They were making over $100 million a month,
            Profit or revenue? Remember it shot to the top of the streaming charts; that's where their advertising budget went.

            League of Legends has enormous monthly revenue, but a large amount of it goes on "user acquisition", i.e. advertising. They actually factor in their "user acquisition" cost with their "average revenue per player". It's a process; the average player might spend $5, but might cost $4.50 to get them to play the game.
            Last edited by Asura; 20-08-2019, 18:46.

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              They did better in a few months of apex than a year of Titanfall2 being on sale, on of the best all round games in the last decade.

              What’s a developer supposed to do when that happens, I feel for them I really do.

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                Small update added a rotating shop for 4 skins (of 12) from the latest lootbox for a eye watering £16 each... they can get on their bike for that money.

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                  Originally posted by fishbowlhead View Post
                  They did better in a few months of apex than a year of Titanfall2 being on sale, on of the best all round games in the last decade.

                  What’s a developer supposed to do when that happens, I feel for them I really do.
                  And not only that but the MTX model in TF2 was perfect. You purchased an item for the local currency price and the things were reasonable. No buying packs of 'Idiot bucks'.

                  But as you say Apex has probably already earnt over 4-5+ times TF2's revenue, cost less to develop and likely had much less spent on marketing.
                  Last edited by Digfox; 20-08-2019, 20:06.

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                    It just shows the pervasive nature of these companies. It wasn't so many years ago that people were up in arms (rightly) about Bethesda charging £2.50 for the horse armour skin, now some folk at not even baulking at the ridiculous price of what was $180 for a legendary weapon skin.

                    The publishers are heating the water up and you are the frog.

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                      Originally posted by MartyG View Post
                      It just shows the pervasive nature of these companies. It wasn't so many years ago that people were up in arms (rightly) about Bethesda charging £2.50 for the horse armour skin, now some folk at not even baulking at the ridiculous price of what was $180 for a legendary weapon skin.

                      The publishers are heating the water up and you are the frog.
                      Bad metaphor. People were annoyed about Horse Armour because it was on top of the price of a full-whack game they'd already paid for, and felt like such a small, specific feature at cost. Even so, that was in 2006; millions of people were paying for World of Warcraft subsciptions and not complaining, if you want a specific, contemporary counter-example.

                      I still don't feel you can compare seasonal, service-based free-to-play game pricing to normal, full-whack, (potentially) boxed game pricing. They're just totally different things; it's like comparing Monopoly to Warhammer. One is a static experience which is the same every time you play; the other is an ongoing, expandable hobby. They're both board games but you just wouldn't compare the price of a space marine miniature to the price of replacing a missing Monopoly piece.

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                        Problem with that analogy is that a lot of games mix and match business models. Games like Destiny, The Elder Scrolls Online versus The Division. Hell there are a lot of these 'static' games selling MTX.

                        That said whilst MartyG's example was from an earlier time, Oblivion was about as GaaS as you got back then. I certainly think you can make comparisons and his point is valid. Ultimately the bigger picture is one of dev/pub greed and even all of the money never being enough.

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                          Who’s the frog? You’re the frog!

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                            We're all frogs.

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                              Originally posted by Digfox View Post
                              I certainly think you can make comparisons and his point is valid.
                              I don't believe so, but then we're in the realms of opinion so I'm not going to hash it out.

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                                9 seasons of content leaks

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