EA Exec: On-Disc DLC Complaints Are "Nonsense"

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

Does this ever work?

Seriously, has there ever been a case in our civilization where someone from a hated and maligned regime comes and says "Oh, you peasants just don't understand. We're right. Pay more and understand how benevolent we are" and people actually buy it?

"A lot of that resistance comes from the erroneous belief that somehow companies will ship a game incomplete, and then try to sell you stuff they have already made and held back," Moore said in a recent interview with Gamespot. "Nonsense. You come and stand where I am, next to Visceral's studio, and you see the work that is being done right now. And it's not just DLC, this is free updates and ongoing balance changes."

Fine. I will. I'd love to come stand where you are. I would love to be apart of board meetings. And I'd love to realize that you, yes, you Mr. Moore and people like are you making these game designers bastardize their own visions. Because you decided it had to be out by such and such a time which forces them to take their story and DLC good parts of it out because they need to work on the core in time, and have it shipped by your schedule.

Also? Those free updates? Are we talking about the numbers [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.862466-EA-Finally-Admits-Battlefield-4-Damaged-Trust-with-Gamers] of [http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/11/simcity-is-inherently-broken-lets-not-let-this-go/] AAA [http://help.ea.com/en/article/fifa-15-known-issues-and-workarounds/] games [http://www.videogamer.com/xboxone/titanfall/news/titanfall_ea_addresses_bugs_crashes_and_connection_errors.html] shipped broken?

Well, isn't it just good manners to clean up your own messes? But better manners, Moore? Not to make said messes in the first place.

 

[thebobmaster_v1legacy]

EA, just...stop trying to communicate with gamers until you can arrange for your PR department to word your points in a way that can't be misunderstood by the listener. Even when you make a decent point, you word it so badly that you are called out of touch or even the worst company in America. Until you steal or borrow some of Valve 's OR, do not let any executives speak.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Yeah, screw the customers. What do they know anyway?

 

[Citizen Graves]

EA Exec: On-Disc DLC Complaints Are "Nonsense"


"A lot of that resistance comes from the fact that our company will regularly ship a game in an incomplete state, filled with bugs and imbalances which take us over a year to fix (if we bother to do it at all), and then try to sell you stuff we have already made and held back behind a paywall," Moore said in a recent interview with Gamespot.

"You come and stand where I am, next to Visceral's corpse, and you see the decay of a once potentially great studio, ruined by us like so many before it."

Moore elaborated further by explaining that on-disc DLC isn't "content" - it's more like a scam, which helps the actual business run smoothly. "Think of them as hostages," Moore said, "and we will never let them go unless you pay up."

Well said, Mr. Moore. It's good to see America's worst game-company fight tooth and nails for it's top spot.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

EA, just...stop trying to communicate with gamers until you can arrange for your PR department to word your points in a way that can't be misunderstood by the listener. Even when you make a decent point, you word it so badly that you are called out of touch or even the worst company in America. Until you steal or borrow some of Valve 's OR, do not let any executives speak.

How dare you try to deny us one of the most absolute joys of being a gamer?! This is like comedy gold. I want him to say more without having the slightest idea how he comes across.

You simply can't write this beautiful trainwreck into a side of a kindergarten! Honestly, if someone wrote a COO this far up his own butt in a movie, I'd throw my popcorn for thinking the writers would make anyone this cartoonishly out of touch. Now that I'm faced with the absurdity of this being factual, I have only two responses: Anger and complete amusement

[/fake anger towards you is fake, made for humorous effect]

 

[A.K.B.]

Shut up, Satan!

Spoiler

really! I'm not kidding. Just look at his picture... It's fuckin' frighting!

 

[sonicneedslovetoo]

PR pre school edition:
You don't tell the customer they are wrong about unpopular moves your company makes.
You should try and spin unpopular things your company does in a positive light relative to the customer, not relative to you.

This has been another edition of "PR you should learn before you so much as open your mouth in a public setting for a company you work for"

 

[direkiller]

Is he actually telling the truth? I haven't followed much when it comes to on-disc DLC but all of the replies here are simply ignoring his statement that there is actually no content but just a framework that allows DLC to be added. Can anyone here either prove/disprove this?

It's true of most DLC
but it's something that people did not have a problem with to begin with.
He is arguing a non-issue, to all but the fringe crazy.

 

[Scrythe]

So if the stuff on the disc isn't content but just "support code", then why do so many DLC's take up mere kilobytes of data?

Answer: Peter Moore is pulling this out of his ass.

 

[Random Gamer]

Does this ever work?
Seriously, has there ever been a case in our civilization where someone from a hated and maligned regime comes and says "Oh, you peasants just don't understand. We're right. Pay more and understand how benevolent we are" and people actually buy it?

There's always a massive dose of confirmation bias.
So the people who still hope/think the regime looks after them will believe it when the tyrant comes and says he actually works for the people. The people who already mistrusts or hates him won't believe him. End-result is no one changed his opinion, at best he postponed the time where some true believers will abandon him.

"A lot of that resistance comes from the erroneous belief that somehow companies will ship a game incomplete, and then try to sell you stuff they have already made and held back..."

OK, so you're going to disprove the fact that you're selling incomplete games?
Lets hear your defense..

When reading that, I was actually thinking "Wait, is there a single AAA studio that doesn't ship incomplete or broken games?"

 

[Shadefyre]

So when you buy DLC, and get a 40Kb download from it, that isn't just a digital on-switch to allow you to access on-disc content (like Capcom loves to do)? Come the fuck on Moore.

 

[Elfgore]

Keep shoving that head further up that ass, EA. You just give everyone more comedic news pieces.

 

[Gennadios]

When Moore made the point that they went from 70 to 12 games a year, I have to admit he has a point.

Unfortunately it also means that EA is probably in some kind of financial bind.

When Games Workshop started losing players, they're solution was to provide less units per box and charge extra for the box to squeeze more money from existing players. Comic books brought down the number of issues (cutting Spider Man from 4 books a month to two) and charged more for the books.

Despite the fact that he does have a point, how many players will those 12 games interest? I can't think of a single EA game that's slated for release. There will probably be a Battlefield in there somewhere.

So yeah, good luck keeping your players engaged by paying more for fewer games, EA! It's worked really well in the past.

 

[Callate]

It's certainly possible that, in least some cases, the unused code on disk really is just "extra character will go here" kind of things, not fully-fleshed out content that's being yoiked out of consumers' hands so they can sell it to them later.

But I'd bet Moore doesn't really want anyone to go back with a pair of tweezers and a magnifying glass through the code of every game with "on-disk" DLC to confirm that this has been the case across the board.

And whatever the reality, anyone working with EA should know better than to throw out these kind of defensive, self-serving, and seemingly dismissive comments where people can hear them by now.

 

[Chester Rabbit]

I'm sorry but WHAT!? Okay EA, you are now back on my shit list! Congrats!

 

[Canadamus Prime]

I think he's an ass for casually dismissing customer concerns. Even if he makes valid points, he's still an ass. Although I'm not bothered by On-Disk DLC as much as I am EA's habit of deliberately withholding features from a sequel that were in the previous game just so they can then sell them as DLC.

 

[EndlessSporadic]

This man is full of shit. In addition:

"Eight years ago when I joined EA, we were publishing 70 games a year. 70. And this year we might do twelve," he said. "The big games drive so much engagement nowadays, because they are not games you play for a while and then walk away from. Triple-A games today have live elements to them, and things like season passes are a way of keeping people engaged. Today we've got what used to be the size of a whole game development team, of about 40 or 50 people, working solely on the extra content."

That is because 8 years ago EA hadn't purchased then shut down every major game studio yet. You are a cancer to our industry, Moore. Get the fuck out of our industry.

 

[Hairless Mammoth]

Well, that was a 180 from all the ass kissing EA and many others were doing a month ago.

If the locked on-disc content is something that was cut and hidden because of crunch time on the main part of the game, like unfinished and untested environments, or characters with missing textures or animations, I might let it slide if the DLC prices are not high. ("Might" is a major keyword, since the publisher could have rushed the dev team and put them in the position to have to cut large amounts of content in the first place.)

If the DLC price is pretty steep and the size of the download is super small, I'm calling BS.

The DLC practices of major publishers is one reason why I don't buy stuff until other consumers test it out for me (and the GOTY edition is out).

 

[Dalisclock]

EA would benefit if they hired someone to hang out at the board meetings/press conferences who had cart blache to slap the hell out of someone who started saying stupid shit like this.

I would also accept hiring Tyrian Lannister to piss on said executive while standing on the boardroom table.