38 Studios founder Curt Schilling has responded to gamers’ reception of the online pass for Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning.
Last week, reports emerged that KOA:R requires an online pass to access a faction quest in the game, which contains seven single player quests. Gamers were generally less than positive in their reception of the reports. In a thread titled “Did you push back at EA at all over this? Quest content gated by online pass.” on the official KOA:R forums (Warning: full post contains slightly NSFW language), Curt Schilling responded. Below is part of his response, in which he says he views the online pass as a form of free “Day One” DLC:
DAY 1 DLC, to be extremely and VIVIDLY clear, is FREE, 100% totally FREE, to anyone that buys a new copy of Reckoning, ANYONE.
If you don’t buy new games you buy them used, and in that case you will have to pay for the Day 1 free DLC content the new copy buyers got for free.
It’s clear the intent right? To promote early adopters and MUCH MORE IMPORTANT TO ME, REWARD fans and gamers who commit to us with their time and money when it benefits the company.
Every single person on the planet could wait and not buy Reckoning, the game would hit the bargain bin at some point and you could get it cheaper. 38 Studios would likely go away.
That’s just how business works. We MUST make a profit to become what we want to become. THE ONLY way we do that is to make games you CANNOT WAIT TO BUY! If we do that, and you do that, we want to reward you with some cool free stuff as a thank you.
You can TOTALLY disagree with this and I am sure many do, so we’ll agree to disagree. This is not 38 trying to take more of your money, or EA in this case, this is us REWARDING people for HELPING US! If you disagree due to methodology, ok, but that is our intent.
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is scheduled to release on PS3, Xbox 360, and PC on February 7th.
What do you think of Curt Schilling’s response? Has the online pass affected your decision to purchase KOA:R? Let us know in the comments below!
