14 DAY TRIAL // The fact that crowd-funded PC games get their distribution fees waived for the first 90 days on the Original digital distribution service should get more developers interested in working with Electronic Arts and reflects the company’s interest in independent titles.
Speaking with GamesIndustry International, Dave DeMartini, the senior vice president in charge of Origin at Electronic Arts, has stated, “I think a lot of people are going to jump on it. They really have absolutely nothing to lose, so I couldn’t imagine why they wouldn’t want to do this.”
He added, “We’re always having conversations with developers. We’ve signed well over 50 developers and publishers to Origin already, but we didn’t specifically reach out to anyone who was being crowd-funded.
“We just knew from our experience within the community that of course they would be happy about us doing this. I’ve looked at a few comments online and seen people saying: ‘boy this looks fishy because it doesn’t look like there is anything wrong with it. Why is EA doing this?’”
DeMartini says that Electronic Arts has a long history of supporting independent game development and it made sense to give small teams a chance to reach the Origin audience and an acknowledgement that a lot of well-known series are now supported via crowd-funding efforts.
The executive also says that there’s no trick in the Electronic Arts offer and that the company has no plans to restrict the freedom of the developers in any way.
Kickstarter, which allows fans to pledge money in order to support their favorite concepts, has been a boon to the independent game industry and many projects have managed to secure solid funding and are now probably looking for easy ways to distribute their titles.
Origin, despite a number of recent exclusive releases like Mass Effect 3 and Star Wars: The Old Republic, still lacks behind Valve’s Steam in terms of users and game catalog.