Curt Schilling Comments on Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning’s Online Pass

It seems people on 38 Studios’ official forums reacted quite strongly to the news of an online pass contained in first-hand copies of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, enough for chairman and founder Curt Schilling to comment on it. It’s difficult to just extrapolate one quote from the whole thing, so I’m going to quote it in its entirety:

Ok, everyone take a deep breath. 48 pages, damn.

I was hoping to come in here and start this thread another way, but I can’t. Anything other than “I didn’t know’ feels better, but is really a lie. Believe it or not in a company of 400+ I don’t get the nitty gritty details of everything, and I make mistakes. I did both here, and it’s on me.

Believe that or not, it’s true.

Next. I honestly was wondering what the fuss was about as I woke up a bit dazed and jet lagged, to see the thread, and unlike most companies I didn’t ‘check in’ with PR and Marketing folks, to see what was going on or if there was an ‘official response’, again that’s totally on me.

Now if you, and we, both want to go that route we could, and that would mean I would stop posting (our community team just lept off the ground!), but I can’t, it’s not me.

Me making that statement though, it appears as if the TEAM, our team, is disorganized, and that is not the case, this is squarely on me, and something I should have pursued a conversation on a long time ago.

That being said, this next part is likely to piss people off, but it’s a truth and it’s how I feel. You can argue the merits and effectiveness of it, but right now it’s how it’s done and as someone that’s as invested as I am in this company, I stand by what has happened.

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.

I said earlier I did not know, truth is after a day of soul searching I do remember conversations I was on the cusp of but I, ME, never followed up and didn’t ever pursue them. But damn, if EA and EAP don’t step in and bet on us it would have never mattered and this game would have never been made.

The industry is in a very odd place. The data coming in on used game sales is not saying the things many thought it should, or would. But companies are still trying to figure out how to receive dollars spent on games they make, when they are bought. Is that wrong? if so please tell me how.

Again, you can argue with methods, or process, and you absolutely can bitch and gripe about ANY DAY 1 DLC you are charged for, because I think I agree with many on that, but we are trying to create something here, product and company wise, and it takes dollars to do that.

I said above but I will restate, this falls squarely on me, it is my responsibility as the leader to know of things like this and be aware that it would become an issue, I failed on both accounts. No one else is to blame, but at the same time there is no nefarious attempt to do anything under handed here, you get the content, NO MATTER WHAT PLATFORM you purchase the game for, or what outlet you buy from, FOR FREE.