Skate 2 unlock option on PSN and Live Comments by Ellie Gibson

For one moment I though they meant unlock all the gamer points and trophies! That would be the untimate casual games players wet dream. Not only are games removing the challenge (you know who you are POP) but, removing the need to play them at all.

This is seriously F*&ked up.

Thats like paying for someone to go on your planned holiday trip and asking them to report back on how good it was so you dont have to experience it...

So pointless.

Which kinda begs the question - what's the point. Some people will obviously still buy this, but getting all the game's rewards without even trying just seems so empty and pointless.

Sales figures for this will be interesting.

I ma having nothing whatsoever against this type of thing, as you sell people anything you want really and they will either buy it or not.

I am however somewhat surprised at the pricing. I would have expected it to be less than that, but maybe the pricing is to discourage its widespread use?

That said, anyone who rants about this being a rip-off is a fool for entirely obvious reasons.

lol - paying for cheat codes?

FUCK YOU games industry. Seriously.

Doesn't really bother me. Only stupid people will pay for it, and you can't blame a company for exploiting retards, it's what they're there for.

I can understand on certain games why people would do this, I did it on GT5:p becasue I couldnt be arsed unlocking all the cars. But do it on this game?

It seems to me like it is one of those things that people have been asking for, but the devs don't really want to give away. So they figure, well ok you can have an unlock but we will charge you a few quid for it. Seems fair to me. A dev is never honour bound to include cheat codes in any game they make.

@penhaliion - unlocking all the gamer points for money! Now that really would nullify the point of them at all.

I understand why they'd sell this, say you don't have much time to play it and the later area's are more fun, why not let them pay to unlock it and blast around the best bits of the city. It's not what I'd do but different people play games in different ways.
I also can't see this as being something developers would 'want' because they carefully construct a world and challenges to arch the gameplay upwards in difficulty and spend a ton of time on game design making it fun right the way through, this purchase kind of breaks all that or at least makes a large amount of it pointless.

Still, not everyone has a vast amount of time to invest in a game, and just want games they can load up and have a quick go on.

Very stupid

The way my life is at the moment, I get this option. Not going to get the game as I know it needs more time than I can invest in it, but for those half way, it isn't a bad option.

Actually I'm surprised it took EA so long to do this - expect other publishers to follow :)

Offical news: Sony is much more rip off than Microsoft! 9 pee more expensive on PSN than on XBL for the SAME content! OMG!!

On a serious note, damn the publishers and their 'unlocking dlc' what is already embedded on the disc. This particular unlock would just practically nullify the reason to play through the game?! DLC is fine for newly created contents but not damnable acceptable for what is already on the disc, I m looking at you Namco Bandai!

@JonFE - they've been doing it in NFS for quite some time...

anyone who rants about this being a rip-off is a fool for entirely obvious reasons.

So they figure, well ok you can have an unlock but we will charge you a few quid for it. Seems fair to me.

You say it seeems fair, and if I say it's a rip-off, I'm a fool? This must be bizarro world - kanga surely you have these two statements the wrong way round.

Nobody remembers the cheat call lines you used to get before the internet rendered them obsolete?

I could see something like this being useful for online games where you unlock weapons e.g. CoD but as far as I can tell you default skate gear performs as well as the later stuff.

sickpuppysoftware:

They still have those premium numbers, where call staff just go to GameFAQs and read out the cheats for the while the caller pays £2 a minute.

i suppose these lines are not a rip off either?

They did the same thing for Tiger Woods plus you can use MS points in NFS to save you having to start the game again after losing your last car. I would never pay for this but I can see a market for it especially with multi player, no time to earn all the über kit then just cough up and you have the same advantage as the kiddies who play 15 hours a day.

On Skate I spent most of my time "free-skating"

It would be good to go anywhere wthin Skate 2 with minimal effort considering SF4, Killzone 2 and Halo Wars are just around the corner.

Having this option will more than liklely entice me to buy the game. I know I simply won't have the time or drive to complete it, but I enjoy "free-skating"

What's the point of getting the game and then wasting points/money on unlocking items you'd get if you just played the game.
Similar to the Need for Speed trying to make you pay for repairs with either the in game cash or Microsoft points.
Also giving you the option to pay to unlock all the cars and parts even though you can just do it by playing the game.
Perhaps it's for those overly keen to get into the online part of it with the best cars already on hand.

@asphaltcowboy: In that case I stand corrected. The most recent NFS game I got was Most Wanted, which I felt was decent, but haven't bothered with any of the rest...

"You say it seeems fair, and if I say it's a rip-off, I'm a fool?"

Yep, thats about the long and short of it ;)

This is optional, and what you are buying a short cut. I think the price is a little high, but the reason it is NOT a rip off is because they aren't selling you something that "should have been on the disc". They are essentially cheat codes, and the NOT part of the core game. There is no rip off to see here because all we are looking at is an optional extra that you buy at your disgression.

You used to buy magazines to get cheat codes, or ring up premium lines to get them. I don't see why is any different.

@skillian

"They still have those premium numbers, where call staff just go to GameFAQs and read out the cheats for the while the caller pays £2 a minute.

i suppose these lines are not a rip off either?"

There is surely a difference between something being a rip off, and something being a service for lazy people. You said yourself they can just to gamefaqs, so why don't the callers do that too? A bit of common sense and 5 mins on the internet would get the same result. The callers in question need to take responsibility for themselves.

BOOOOO! down with this sort of thing,careful now!

You used to buy magazines to get cheat codes, or ring up premium lines to get them. I don't see why is any different.

This is different because developers used to put them in or they got left in by accident, and someone else collected them all in one place and you paid them for it. In this case EA have realised that other people have been making money from something they were giving away free and thought 'Hey! I can make money off that instead!' so they did, and then they fired 3/4 of the company. If you think this is a good thing then you are a mental.

gg.

EA, what a bunch of idiots. They always use DLC for pointless ends.

The only people under the EA banner doing anything sensible in this area is Criterion with Burnout Paradise.

Serioulsy, EA needs to get a clue to see how profitable and popular that game STILL is to understand what DLC is supposed to be for.

/rant.

Just don't buy it. It's not as if the company is forcing it upon you. More fool anyone who does buy it when they want to play the game, or kudos to those who do and have fun with it. The attitude behind it is not exactly that appealing to me, but it's not the end of the world.

@LOLLERS

"'Hey! I can make money off that instead!' so they did, and then they fired 3/4 of the company. If you think this is a good thing then you are a mental."

Well first off, whether it is a good thing or not is irrelevant. I didn't say it was good, but neither is it bad. Its just business. Since when was a company not allowed to sell something they spend money creating?

As for them laying off lots of staff, that is neither here nor there. Its very bad news, but irrelevant in this dicsussion. To bundle the two together, to somehow suggest that my point of view supports both, is nothing a clumsy strawman tactic and tbh it suggests to me that you don't feel you can make your point strongly enough without resorting to smoke and mirrors.

:) (this smiley represents the face of cheeky banter, as things shouldn't get too heated, despite me apparently being mental).

5 years ago all we would have had to do to get this would be type in a cheat code. Now we have to pay for it. Sucks!

You don't HAVE to pay for it. You could simply not cheat.

It was available almost two days ago :)

I'm in the not stupid camp on this one. I think the price is a bit high, but I don't see a problem with it. It merely unlocks all the stuff for you, so what. If you are that bored or really just care about cruising around its nice to be able to skip to the juicy parts. It's not like it gives you a competetive advantage or something.

I actually think all games should have an "unlock everything" option as standard. Well, perhaps not quite everything - more specifically all the levels. Yes, it could be argued it removes the point of someone spending hours mastering a game in order to reap the rewards.

On the other hand, there have been countless examples of games where I've hit a difficulty brick wall half way through and never experienced all that extra content, art and creativity. Which is a shame. Especially as I spent money on it.

I guess the arguement would be that nobody HAS to choose that option and there would still be other incentives for actually playing it through.

Alternatively, perhaps a system that after say 75 retries on a particular section brings up an option of the CPU doing it for you. I guess this is similar to that 'ghost player' thing nintendo are bringing out for the Wii. Think it's a brilliant move and could have prevented the hulk-smash death of a SNES and several snapped Playstation discs.

The callers in question need to take responsibility for themselves.

That's true, and it's people like that who have allowed the idea of paying for cheat codes to flourish.

However, people going to psychics and faith healers should do the same, but that doesn't mean I don't consider people selling such services as the lowest of the low. And yes, I'd also call them rip-off merchants.

There is something to be said for the argument that nothing can be a rip-off if you can find someone dumb enough to pay for it, but if you have any compassion or social responsibility in your heart you must know that it's not as simple as that.

Codemasters have been doing this for years via premium rate phone numbers and via PayPal payments on their website.

bottom line:

CHEAT CODES ARE SUPPOSED TO BE FREE

edit: i hope this shows up on torrent sites. this alone makes me want to mod my xbox and just start downloading DLC like this.

They should start charging to unlock the easy difficulty.

@richardiox

"I actually think all games should have an "unlock everything" option as standard"

I think that falls under a more heading of "stuff I think games should do". Another example might be "all games should have recharging health" or "all games should have a double jump feature".

Now we can't tell devs directly what to put in their games (well maybe we can, but they don't have to listen) and we can't tell publishers what to charge for, but we CAN let them know how feel about it by either buying or not buying their product.

I might refuse to buy an FPS that doesn't support southpaw controls (I'm right handed, but all the same). Their loss, there are plenty of other games out there.


@skillian

"There is something to be said for the argument that nothing can be a rip-off if you can find someone dumb enough to pay for it, but if you have any compassion or social responsibility in your heart you must know that it's not as simple as that."

Ah well, this is true. Maybe I'm just being a heartless git.

I tell you what it is, I'll hold my hands up in the air and share with you all. Reading the article, I KNEW there would be posters storming in with the usual "we are being forced to..." comments.

One of the (clearly numerous) things that winds me up is when gamers complain about what they are being forced to do, when in fact the consumer is the most powerful cog in the machine. If we don't like the product, we don't buy it. I've said it numerous times and I'll say it again, games are not oxygen or heating or food. They are luxuries that we can do without and nobody is twisting our arms to buy them. If someone spends money on a product they KNOW IN ADVANCE they won't like, they either are a fool or an addict and deserve 'exactly what they get' or pity, respectively.

So, anticipating the preditable whining, I went off a bit big guns and started preemptively calling people names. Which was frankly a bit shit of me, but I hope you can see where it was coming from.

People need to take responsibility for themselves a bit more in this world. Make an informed choice about what you spend your money on, and the publisher will get the message. Until then, they should conduct business exactly as they feel is best.

@vegard

That is pure subjective opinion though. Writing "bottom line" in front of it changes nothing. Its like saying "guns in games are supposed to reload automatically". Its never been a rule, and in fact cheat codes are a pretty recent thing and didn't exist for the majority time that video games have been around.

Sounds good to me

One of the (clearly numerous) things that winds me up is when gamers complain about what they are being forced to do, when in fact the consumer is the most powerful cog in the machine. If we don't like the product, we don't buy it. I've said it numerous times and I'll say it again, games are not oxygen or heating or food. They are luxuries that we can do without and nobody is twisting our arms to buy them. If someone spends money on a product they KNOW IN ADVANCE they won't like, they either are a fool or an addict and deserve 'exactly what they get' or pity, respectively

You are bang on with this, I agree.

I just worry that eventually we'll get to the stage where the choice is basically "pay a shitload of money" or "don't play video games".

We are obviously a long way from that though, and just like your remarks were pre-empting the comments here, mine were pre-empting some theoretical future that might not even come about. I guess that means I'm the one being more over-dramatic here :)

@kangarootoo

english isn't my first language, just trying to make a point.
makes me wonder what's next...paying to skip cutscenes (alright, i'm exaggerating again)? i understand companies need to find more ways to make money, i just wish they would present products with a little more thought than this. the worst part is that enough people will buy this, making it "OK".


on a related note: something i would LIKE to pay for is more levels for the zombie survival shooter in saints row 2:)

@vegard

Hey man, I hope you didn't think I was being too much of an ass with you. Your "english isn't my first language, just trying to make a point" response makes me feel like I came across a bit harsher than I meant to. You certainly made your point clearly and your english is very good, so don't feel you misrepresented yourself.

I've obviously got a bee in my bonnet through this thread, for the reasons I mentioned earlier and I fear you just happened to walk in front of my cannon whilst I was lighting the fuse. No offense meant dude.


@skillian (in reverse order, just 'cos I felt bad about my comment to vegard)

"I just worry that eventually we'll get to the stage where the choice is basically "pay a shitload of money" or "don't play video games"."

I tend to trust in market forces to stop that being the case. Any such system where gamers had to pay shit loads to play games would be utterly undermined by a publisher than came along with some quality games that had a much lower shop cost than their competitors.

IF we complain but buy anyway, we are ASKING for the state of affairs your describe (in a roundabout way). Whereas if we say "well if that is what you are offering, I'll take my cash elsewhere" we will make it impossible to end up with the "pay loads or stop gaming" situation you describe. I guess my point is that we can do it calmly, or we can write "its on outrage" in upper case, and the effect will be pretty much the same.... so why not do it calmly.

octo:lol - paying for cheat codes?

FUCK YOU games industry. Seriously.

Yeah, didn't cheats used to be.... free?

When did we start having to pay for cheats?





I remember the days when we unlocked extra levels, characters and bonus features via gameplay

If Goldeneye was released today, we'd be paying £10 for Aztec and Egypt, a scary thought...

"I remember the days when we unlocked extra levels, characters and bonus features via gameplay"

...which is exactly what you can do in this case... or pay for the same result.

Edit:
Another thought, DLC is only possible these days because of the internet. A lot of games from yesteryear may well have charged for extra content if there had been any way to get said content to the consumer.

Anyway, we can't just use historic examples, as we have no way of knowing whether the games our youth effectively "included the extra content for free" or whether the extra content simply didn't exist. All games are different sizes, both in terms of content and hours of gameplay, so we have no benchmark to which we can refer. Hence it is a purely hyperthetical situation, and we can't reliably conclude anything from it.

Oh, and gamesaves can be downloaded off GameFaqs, so lazy, but savvy gamers can unlock their shit for free...

Whats is the point of buying a game and then using cheats to ruin it for you if you dont play the game through first???

Some people play games for the fun, not for the challenge.

There's nothing wrong wanting to be able to choose from all the songs in Guitar Hero, nor in wanting to run around City 17 with infinite rockets.

For casual gamers, this is an excellent opportunity - although it should be free, imo. Anyway, I know my old man is going to get a PS3, and try some games (he's getting old an curious :P), but he doesn't have time or will to play through a billion races just to be able to choose the car he wants in Burnout. Locking saves to your profile really is the stupidest thing ever. For example, I've unlocked almost everything in Burnout, but if I don't want guests to use my profile, why shouldn't I be able to just copy the save to the guests profile?

Usually, gaming has become more and more approachable by non-gamers, but this is one thing where progress have gone in the opposite direction. Saves should never be locked. Just make it so that copying saves triggers a certain piece of code that prevents you from getting the trophies from the gamesave.

Fuck this. Yes, cheating your way through a game you've bought sucks.

But how about this... I've played all the way through all my Guitar Hero games, unlocked everything. When I take those games into work to play on our 360 at lunch, everything's locked again. So I grab the cheat code, unlock everything, we all play and enjoy.

If they put this into every game, there'd be a time you'd realise you wanted the cheat code and it wasn't there. Even if you're not a 'cheater'.