Complete list of EA's mistakes for future reference (in progress)

[Requia]

Yet you still need steam to play it. Just think about it, if skyrim was not on steam and didn't require steam and the only way to get it was through brick/mortar stores and humble bundle, what percentage of the current total sales do you think skyrim would have? My money would say maybe 60-70% of the current total sales. That much power scares me because it is getting to a point where people are/will eventually following though on the threat of "steam or no sale". How can anyone not see that as scary?

So you're basically saying that you hate Steam because they're succesful, even if it's not their fault that they're so good (well, I guess in a sense it is their "fault") that everybody wants to do their business through them.

Then what does this have anything to do with Origin insulating itself? It's the exact opposite. One doesn't want anything to do with others games. The other has an army of publishers wanting in, by their own volition. Why do you even bring this up, if not because the hatred is blinding you, I can't figure out, but it certainly isn't on-topic.

Because so much of the hate for origin is that it's not Steam.

Mind you, I have a lot of issues with Origin, but they are *exactly* the same issues I have with Steam minus one (Valve has been great about non windows support), bitching that EA has implemented a totally different DRM system which serves the purpose of taking away your legal right of first sale than Valve did just demonstrates the worrying amount of power Valve has accrued.

 

[Qvar]

Because so much of the hate for origin is that it's not Steam.

Mind you, I have a lot of issues with Origin, but they are *exactly* the same issues I have with Steam minus one (Valve has been great about non windows support), bitching that EA has implemented a totally different DRM system which serves the purpose of taking away your legal right of first sale than Valve did just demonstrates the worrying amount of power Valve has accrued.

Read the topic's title. EA's faults. The DRM is certainly one of the most aggravating of EAs faults, and as such has been mentioned (not by me btw, I hate Origin for different reasons).

Excuse my language but you two are pulling this whole "yeah but Valve does the same" argument out of your respective asses. Nobody has said a word about Valve being innocent on DRMing their games, and that will be properly discussed at the correpsonding "Valve sucks because reasons" thread, which we've had already and I'm sure we will again at some point.

 

[Pink Gregory]

So EA represents the entire videogaming industry, does it?

People seem to be so quick to dismiss everything that's not AAA.

 

[COMaestro]

In my ideal world steam will only sell valve games, Origin will only sell EA games, Uplay will only sell UbiSoft games, etc, with no exceptions. That is my reasoning.

I hate this idea. I don't want to have to have 12+ accounts just to purchase digital games online. That's ridiculous. And in your scenario, where would businesses like GOG sit? They don't produce games, they just sell them. Should they not exist? What happens when a company decides to pull a game from their online catalog and there are no retailers like GOG that might continue to sell the game?

 

[Ticklefist]

In my ideal world steam will only sell valve games, Origin will only sell EA games, Uplay will only sell UbiSoft games, etc, with no exceptions. That is my reasoning.

So you want to have 50 different publisher accounts to play games?

You didn't think this through, did you?

How so? They're just buttons. Pushing buttons isn't hard. Imagine getting up to change disks every time you want to play a different game.

 

[Ticklefist]

- Removing game content to sell it as DLC

The most obvious example being Dragon Age. When you buy a game on release day, play for a couple of hours and an NPC pops up and offers you a quest, that's good. When said NPC wants your credit card informations when you try to accept the
quest, that's bad. The game already has an ingame shop, no need to rub it into peoples faces what they're going to miss when they don't pay additional ten bucks to what they already paid for the game.

While EA doesn't make it quite as obvious anymore, the amount of release day and first month DLC makes them more than suspect of sticking with this shady tactic.

I don't disagree with you. I'm just not familiar with your example. I own both DA games and I've never been asked for my credit card when accepting a quest.

 

[James Weaver]

In my ideal world steam will only sell valve games, Origin will only sell EA games, Uplay will only sell UbiSoft games, etc, with no exceptions. That is my reasoning.

So you want to have 50 different publisher accounts to play games?

You didn't think this through, did you?

How so? They're just buttons. Pushing buttons isn't hard. Imagine getting up to change disks every time you want to play a different game.

Yeah it's not like you have to have accounts and passwords for each ohhh waaaait.

Unless you're using the exact same password for everything this is a hassle and the main reason I dislike Origin; it adds extra complexity that I just don't want to be bothered with and doesn't actually add anything for me as a consumer.

 

[Qvar]

In my ideal world steam will only sell valve games, Origin will only sell EA games, Uplay will only sell UbiSoft games, etc, with no exceptions. That is my reasoning.

That's a terrible, terrible idea. Dozens of accounts, you could say goodbye to anything resembling a in-store community, and all for NOTHING in exchange. Oh well you could feel safer from the evil Valve and their plot to steal all the games.

In my ideal world we would have a centralized game repository with a single account. Then if every publisher wants to set up their own shop (to sells their games contained at the repository) instead of letting the 3rd parties do the job, they're welcome. But that's not gonna happen because the publishers would never agree on how to found and who would control this neutral repository.

Geh I'm such a commie.

ps: It could be financed through an internal fixed tax on every game sold, ensuring that everybody pays a proportional part to how much is he making.

 

[Ticklefist]

I don't disagree with you. I'm just not familiar with your example. I own both DA games and I've never been asked for my credit card when accepting a quest.

Maybe you got some special edition, but in the standard edition some guy with a quest marker shows up at the camp pretty early in the game. He tells you about his family and an old, haunted keep. When you try to accept the quest, he tells you visit the Bioware Store and buy it.

The credit card thing was more methaphoric.

Yeah, I bought the Ultimate Edition so that never happened to me. In Need 4 Speed Most Wanted a similar thing happens when you try to jump into one of the DLC cars.

 

[Edl01]

The recent Dungeon Keeper fiasco, to begin with.
Ruining Dead Space.
Pulling games out of other stores to force people install Origin.

These are subjective issues and I personally have no problem with these at all.

I like Origin, I like the direction that Dead Space went, and as far as Dungeon Keeper goes, it is an Ios game. It is, okay, as far as ios games go.

Dungeon Keeper taking a classic franchise and filling it with Micro-Transactions should could as a sin.

 

[Ticklefist]

I'm not here to let EA off the hook, they've earned the flack they get. I do think they've finally got the message though and have begun to right themselves.

 

[Qvar]

Btw Mass Effect was released 1 month after Bioware was bought by EA. I would hardly give them any credit for that one. But generally speaking, it's not the quality of their games by itself. They are mostly good. It's the constant obsession on fucking consumers and compulsive money-grabbing, that earns them so much hate.

While pretty much everybody creates DLCs for their games (if the game is succesful ofc), EA decided that it wasn't enough, and started not only cutting content out of the game to sell it as separated (other infamous cases are Creative Assembly for example), but also rubbing it on our face while you play, such as the already mentioned DA:O, or The Sims 3.

It's bad enough that they give me only 4 chairs to choose from after they have been creating godamn chairs for the 2 previous games during 10 years, but it's even worse that they try to sell me the other 6 ones for extra money showing them directly in-game like if it was a friggin facebook game.

 

[BusaLova]

Great points. Looks like the micro transactions entry is gonna need more than a handful of subentries to distinguish the many ways MT's work.

Googling the words ''EA lawsuit'' provides more entertainment than answers. It's honestly quite baffling to see how thoroughly EA fucks up so many things. Anyone seen Wolf of Wall Street? It would at least explain the shitty attitude towards customers and their complaints...

Oh by the way. A game company wanting to sell their games through Steam is like a dairy producer wanting to sell their yoghurt in a big supermarket. It gets exposure, publicity, marketing and sales. In return, the producer has to abide by several conditions to be allowed doing (further) business with the supermarket.

Btw Mass Effect was released 1 month after Bioware was bought by EA. I would hardly give them any credit for that one. But generally speaking, it's not the quality of their games by itself. They are mostly good. It's the constant obsession on fucking consumers and compulsive money-grabbing, that earns them so much hate.

I've already said that.

 

[Requia]

In my ideal world steam will only sell valve games, Origin will only sell EA games, Uplay will only sell UbiSoft games, etc, with no exceptions. That is my reasoning.

That's a terrible, terrible idea. Dozens of accounts, you could say goodbye to anything resembling a in-store community, and all for NOTHING in exchange. Oh well you could feel safer from the evil Valve and their plot to steal all the games.

The in store community is one of the worst things about Steam. You should not be separated from a substantial portion of the community around a single game because you chose to buy it elsewhere.