Digital Game Download "Extended Service"...

Despite the fact its not the best game, its a good time killer for me to have while I am at work and have decided I want to get Hellgate London.

I preordered it from gamestop to get into the beta, but dont feel like going to get the game and like the convience of downloading the games from the net like I have done with several of my steam games and battlefield 2142.

I have a bad habit of breaking or losing phisical game disks and have no space for them anyways. So this is the best way for me to go.

Lose the game no problem! just go download it again and its always there for you for life.

Well thats what I thought anyways.... I just went to the EA store and wanted to see if it was cheaper to d/l the game rather than buy it in store. despite the fact they dont have to pay to ship it somewhere, or make the disk its still 50$... well its worth it for the reasons I said above but then I saw the 6$ charge for extended service and clicked the "whats this" link and read that its a 6$ charge where they hold your digital copy of the game for you for 2 years incase your hard drive gets fried or you lose you data.

All I can think is WTF? so now you have to pay for the service that was standard with all steam games and also bf2142? plus its not even for life its for 2 years. Just about the amount of time it would take me to say hey... I have not played X game in a long time let me go d/l it and play it... Just to find they dont have it for me anymore.

Plus does this mean I need to go download all my old games right away before they suddenly dont let me download it anymore or am I safe to get BF2 and BF2142 ect anytime I want like was originally said back when I got them.

 

I think Norton has a similar getup when installing a new version of their antivirus online, they offer the option to store the installation file for an additional 30 days on their servers for a small fee.

I don't know how the USA retails its games but gamestop isn't the same as Steam and I wouldn't expect it to be. My suggestion would be to back up your games on .iso format with DVD-burning software and store the files on portable HDDs.

 

No I am talking about buying it from the EA store as a digital direct instead of from gamestop.

The same people I bought my digital copy of BF2142 from that is supposed to be there for life.

Plus its just sad that it cost just as much as the retail version of the game (actually more because several retail stores have promotions that save you 10 or 20$ off the game thus making it cost 30-40$ in the store) then they want another 6$ to store it for you for only 2 years when it was a free service.

Thats paying 56$ for the game, it makes no sense and I think its total bull.

 

That's shocking. I have BF2142, Need For Speed Carbon and a few expansion packs on EA download and it is appalling that they will only keep it for two years. I bought BF2142 before it came out and now I'm being told that i can't play it if i have to download it again after two years!! The thing is also, when i bought the game i got a load of free stuff and they have just conveniently disappeared.

With EA only keeping them for two years might be infringing on the law. You bought it with them keeping it for life, when you bought it that contract has to be fulfilled. If they don't keep it you should be entitled to a refund.

 

I agree. They're not going to keep their online service for too long considering most other digital download services allow re-downloading any time. I can see that they want to minimize bandwidth, but really, how often will someone be re-downloading a game? Once or twice a year at most if you format your HDD frequently. If they are really concerned, then allow 2 or 3 downloads of the same fileper year, but no time limit, and then charge $1 or $2 if you download more than that.

The other issue with EA is that they don't make any convenient way to save your downloaded files. Steam at least has an app so you can easily and conveniently burn your files to CD, DVD, or as an executable on your HDD. If EA made this available, they would have fewer downloads. I'd rather spend the 10 minutes decompressing a file on my HDD than a ffew hours redownloading anyways.