EHM The Blue Line

Nope> EdL at SI forums said that a few of the leagues over in Europe were given boxed copies to sell based on the licensing agreement. On the forums I recall that SI has vouched for at least the above site.

Ah, my bad.

It almost seems kind of foolish not to publish a disc version of the game if they went and made one for these folks. Even if they just released a disc version for certain countries where they sold really well. From everything I've read, they've had problems with pirated/hacked copies of the game since the first version. Up until this last version the game sold really well in Finland (and I think Sweden too). Those places didn't sell many this time around. I'm thinking they should've made a disc version for those countries. I remember reading a lot of posts from people there saying they really had a hard time purchasing anything online in their country. Oh well. It's a shame but it's over now.

While I can certainly appreciate the fact that SI were trying to keep costs down, only providing consumers with a digital download option for EHM 2007 was the final nail in the coffin. How many times do consumers go into a games store and not necessarily know what they want to buy? Why do software companies spend the energy and resources on producing sharp looking packaging! Obviously, it is another form of selling the product. I tried in vein to purchase previous versions of EHM in a box form. Apparently, it was available. I searched in multiple NHL Canadian cities and could not find it. I was told it could be found at EBGames. (Not any I visited. I even queried the staff) I contacted SI directly, and was told about the digital download option, not any supplier in Canada that could supply me with a boxed version. Imagine, in the birth place of hockey, I couldn't find a hard copy of the best hockey simulator ever made! How many others looked?

I wanted the box version because I understood from posts and forums that many people who utilized the digital download version in previous versions had serious problems reinstalling, etc. Despite the past problems however, I did purchase (2) digital versions of EHM 2007, hoping that I wouldn't experience the same problems. The bottom line.....If I wanted the product, I didn't have a choice! My question is "How many people would have bought the product, that either don't shop on the net, or are too young to possess a credit card or didn't have exposure the product in the first place" All the great reviews of PC Gamer don't mean a thing if no one knows that your product exists, or can't find it easily.

I don't make these comments to excuse pirates, who have clearly put EHM's future in jeopardy, but believe if this phenomenal product had been more accessible and marketed better, we might not be talking about its future.

thewison: What's exactly the use of your post? If you post just to complain about SI's strategy, do it on the SI boards, with all the others that always rant for (nearly) nothing.

Furthermore, SI already explained a thousand times why they were forced to release the game via digital download only. And it was 6 monthes ago...

I am sorry (Shadd666) mistook my comments as a rant.

"If you post just to complain about SI's strategy, do it on the SI boards, with all the others that always rant for (nearly) nothing."

The purpose of my post was not directed to any of the game developers or those who have poured their heart and soul into its development. If you believe this is not the place to debate the "Why's" of SI's decision to stop development, I am sorry. Please let me clarify.

I believe our community has a right to be disappointed about the circumstances surrounding SI's decision to stop development of EHM. While I have no doubt that the reasons SI gave for abandoning development of EHM were genuine, I find it too "narrow" for SI to suggest that "pirating" or a lack of sales in North America and Europe, etc were the primary reason for its downfall. In my opinion, although on the surface true, this was not the cause of poor sales, but was more likely a result of poor marketing and distribution. I believe that many supporters of EHM saw the writing on the wall and tried to express some of these problems as I did in my original post, not to beat up on the great work they did, but to provide constructive advice for the future. This, Shadd666, is not wrong.

I believe that it makes the discussion of why a first-class product like EHM couldn't or didn't sell, a completely relevant discussion to our community and especially any company or group that may look into it's future development. If we resign ourselves to SI's rational, I can't see any other company wanting to take on development of EHM or any other hockey simulator for that matter.

Just a couple of thoughts.

1. I have yet to hear of any PC game sold that has fail-safe pirating protecton.
2. If you can't sell the best hockey manager ever made, to classic hockey nations, you don't need a new game, just a different marketing strategy.
3. If people don't have accessable ways to purchase your product, they won't. (Some people believe that this is at a local store!) I wonder how significantly FM2007 sales would be affected if it was only offered as a digital download? How much more would it be downloaded illegally.

About digital download, the issue was clear: EHM07 will be digital download only, or EHM07 will never be, so the choice was really limited Why? Because the stores command according to the sales of the last product. In the EHM case, the sales weren't that great with EHM05, and there was no EHM06 (due to the lock-out in the NHL), so the stores didn't want to command EHM07, and so SI couldn't sell it in stores. From then, digital download was the only possibility to release the game. They didn't like it, we didn't like it, but unfortunately it was the only viable option.

About piracy, you can't make benefits when you sell 1 copy of the game while 7 copies are pirated. That's to say that less than 15% of the EHM players bought the game. When you know that hockey isn't that popular in the world and that management games aren't that popular in the video games market, it means that less than 15% of a small community bought the game, leading the impossibility to make profits on 3 consecutive versions of the game, and so the devellopement halts. Sad for everyone, devellopers and gamers, but true.

About your 3 thoughts now:

1. For sure, fail-safe pirating protection is just a legend and will never exists, unfortunately. But big games (in terms of reputation, think MMORPG) still sell a lot, no matter how hard they are pirated, so they still make profits and can devellop their product. It devellops slower than it could have been due to the pirating, but they still have enough money to continue develloping their product. The problem is that the number of pirates is more or less the same for any game. But this same number of pirates is a different proportion on each game sales, according to the number of people who play the game. And on a small market like EHM, this amount of piracy is over 85%, so you can't make any profits with that.

2. First, yes, EHM is by far the best hockey management game ever made. On the marketing side, just remember that it costs a lot! And you can't be sure that you'll get the money back in terms of sales. So SI/SEGA couldn't spend a huge amount of cash in the marketing. They did their best with a limited budget. Just keep in mind that previous versions lost money (EHM04 and EHM05), so this game lost money from the start! This means that they really couldn't spend that much money on the marketing. That's just logical. Once again sad and annoying, but logical.

3. I already answered on the digital download thing. And don't compare EHM and FM!!! There's absolutely no possible comparaison! FM is already a legend in the gamers community, and they are based on the most popular sport of the world. They don't have the same problems that EHM has to make boxed-copies, so that's irrelevant. Nonetheless, even if FM goes digital download only, they would still make profits. They'll maybe make less profits, but still make profits, due to the fact it's a legendary game that people would purchase anyway. EHM should have become a legendary game, according to it's superb quality, but EHM is not a legendary game. And there wouldn't have been that much more piracy on FM if they went digital download only. The ones who want to pirate the game already do it, no matter if there's a boxed-version or not.

It's really kind of sad to see that SI Games has let the EHM thing go or atleast until they want to give it another shot or see another way of making big bucks with it.

I know that I've only played EHM 2007, but I love it. I like playing this better than playing NHL 07 or any other hockey game on the Xbox 360. This game is just fun for those that are older and like to be more into the game. Knowing that it is who you sign and what you pickup that can either make or break your team. If you control the team out on the ice, you can easily make a bad player a good one. But in this game, you honestly can't do that. You might be able to make them slightly better, but not much.

All in all, really sad to see it go, but just glad that they released this version and the new patch also.

JVanderpool wrote:It's really kind of sad to see that SI Games has let the EHM thing go or atleast until they want to give it another shot or see another way of making big bucks with it.

Unfortunately, it's already the 3rd version of the game who loss money They tried 3 times to make benefits on it, and it failed each time because of piracy. It's already nearly a miracle that they tried 3 times! Most other would have stop after the first version, and a few after the second failure.

Sad to see such a superb game stopped anyhow

What's really sad about north america people it's the fact that people likes more arcade game then simulation. So everyone tried to get it on Bittorent (my friends)... When i heard the news about that i became so mad because it was my favorite hockey game. I had all the EA SPORT NHL until i found the first version of EHM...

It's been over a year now since EHM07 came out... Over 6 months that the development is officially stopped... Over a month that EHM08 should have been out... But even after all this time, we're still here to support this superb game and make more and more projects for it. This has been possible only thanks to all of us, the EHM community. So thanks to all of you for keeping interest to this game and to the TBL forums!

Hmm, is there anyway of downloading ehm again since i got a new computer and lost everything. The site is down where i downloaded it the last time. So is there a way?


rubbish.

Seems like SI's site is down, for sure, but it's propably just temporary. Afterall, the company is still working on manager games, just not EHM. You'll prolly get it from there once it gets back online.

archibalduk wrote:This is such tragic news. It really hasn't sunk in yet for me This just shows what happens when people make pirate copies of software - it really does affect the game developers. Perhaps this is the first time that piracy has resulted in a game series being abandoned?

The Sega Dreamcast. Had virtually no copy protection making it possible to direct copy games, or download and copy. Resulting in the death of that console. I never owned one, but a buddy did, it was awesome.