Do games publishers actually want people to buy their games, or do they really think consumers (that’s me and probably you) are stupid?
Off and on I’ve been following the progress of a new game called Hellgate: London, largely because it’s being made by a few of the folks who made the classic Diablo games. As the release date has been getting nearer more information has been released concerning the game’s ‘revenue streams’ and I can’t help but feel that the publishers must have a PR department that have mastered the arcane art of reverse marketing - how to completely put people off your game.

A blog post over at the excellent Dubious Quality pretty much sums the main issues up far better than I could. In a nutshell it is free to go online with the game but you have to pay a monthly subscription to get the most out of the game. Rather mean spirited but nothing too terrible there really, except the publishers have shoe horned real world advertising into the game oh, and to do this the game installs adware onto your PC. Plus they’ve included all this lovely stuff in the demo as well!

Well done chaps!

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 25th, 2007 at 2:16 pm and is filed under PC games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.