EA is not evil.

[ecoho]

they arnt evil, but they tend to be idiots when it comes to knowing what people want. Now dont get me wrong i still buy and enjoy EA games (loved both the ending to mass effect 3 and the entirety of DA 2) but the changeing of the overstrike,now fuse, art style/astedics, and the announcement of no longer focusing on single player just come accross as idiotic.

I agree with that. Their PR department really needs to get a makeover, with people who actually know how to give public speeches. Then again, at this point, wouldn't make any difference. Damage is done, and any attempt to fix it would result in words being twisted.

no it would be easy to fix. first fire the idiot who did the public stament and have the current CEO step down. Next have the new CEO come out a say that the former PR rep was an idiot and spoke without thinking and that they are sorry for the mix up.

 

[Vigormortis]

They're not evil, they are quite ruthless with their business practices and there are arguments for and against that. On one hand they get results; on the other their reputation suffers as do the smaller developers who rely on them.

and no EA is not evil, they are just Arrogant fuckwits, you know who eise is a corporation? Valve and no one hates them

There's a lot of bad things to say about Valve. Their development time should not be that long. I don't like the way Steam has such a huge influence on Indie gaming Valve's terms and conditions essentially put rules on what people can or can't put in their game if they ever plan on selling it.

I felt I should address a few things:

Firstly, their lengthy development times come as a result of how many projects they work on at any given time, coupled with their relatively small employee count. (~270 A paltry sum compared to most devs)

I often here people complain that Valve never releases anything. Valve has all-but consistently released at least one game every year since 2003, not counting the endless number of updates, content addons, and Steam, Source, and other miscellaneous software development projects. It's honestly a fairly impressive release schedule.

Secondly, Valve has only recently come into being a "huge influence" on the indie market with the advent of Greenlight. And, even now, it's hardly a blip. Before that they had barely any existence beyond helping to further distribute titles that already existed, with a few exceptions.

It fascinates me that people seem to think that, for an indie game to become successful, it has to be released on Steam. I mean, really? Come on people.

Your third point seems to point towards that recent "controversial" news story about some indie developer trying to put a porn game on Steam.

Does this really surprise you? Without getting into the whole (stupidly hyperbolic) violence-vs-sex debate, is it really that shocking to see a company with such a large public presence blocking sexually explicit content from it's service?

Besides, it's not like Valve has forced that developer to abandon their game. I still don't get where people are getting that idea. They simply aren't allowing them to use Steam as a distributor. That dev is more than able to finish their game and to release it to the PC market through any number of other methods and platforms.

................................

Anyway, on topic:

No OP, you're right. EA is not inherently "evil".

However, they are woefully incompetent and obnoxiously malicious in their general business practices.

We're talking about a company that has given real credence to ideas like charging for bullets in Battlefield 3 or content locking console games unless people paid extra fees. (ideas brought up in Project $10 that later became the Online Pass)

I'm not even going to go into their incredibly annoying, idiotic, insulting, unprofessional, and childish advertisement and PR departments.

So no, EA is not "evil". It is, however, a terrible company that is more than deserving of much of the ire it receives.

Oh, and listen people. It is okay to dislike EA and still love games like Mass Effect and Battlefield. In fact, if you're fans of games published under EA you should be even more angry than those who aren't fans, given that EA, in most cases, systematically ruins the franchises you love.

Just because someone says they don't like EA it doesn't mean they dislike games published by them.

I, like others around here, have fond memories of EA from years ago. They were a company that, while certainly not quite admirable, often went that extra mile to bring amazing content to the players.

Sadly, they are not that company anymore.

 

[Vigormortis]

Here's a fresh batch of rage for anyone who looked forward to Insomniac's new IP - Overstrike.

Spoiler

God damn you EA. I had high hopes for Overstrike. It looked not only damned fun but funny as well. A good change of pace from the usual dark-and-gritty military-themed shit we get now-a-days.

Seriously, fuck you EA. Just....fuck you. I hopes Zynga finds a way to take you for every damned dollar you're worth.

 

[Aeonknight]

your favorite developer signed on the dotted line. Whether it was an offer that couldn't be refused or it was supposed to be a "hail mary" to try and stay afloat, it takes 2 to tango.

An argument that other people suck as well, is not an argument that EA doesn't.

Then how come it seems to be EA drawing the ire of everyone? I'm a fan of giving credit where it's due, good or bad, so where's the incessant whining for every little thing done by every developer ever? Or does EA being slightly worse than the rest give everyone a free pass?

"EA ruins franchises!"
Opinion. Some people still like the games of franchises that have been "ruined". Just like some of us are still looking forward to Dead space 3, or how people actually enjoyed mass effect 3 despite the terribad ending. This is not an arguement, this is opinion.

A majority opinion means it's essentially a truth for all purposes. If I publish a really shitty game with terrible gameplay and pathetic writing, and everyone goes wow that games is shitty. Saying WELL THAT'S JUST ALL YOUR OPINIONS. Doesn't make the game suck any less hard.

Sorry, no. Alot of their main franchises like Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Battlefield, Dead Space etc. have large enough fanbases that for every naysayer you find you could probably dig up someone who enjoyed it. But that would require work, and we all know the bitching gamer is the one who gets heard, not the content one.

You're trying to say that the industry as a whole would be better off without games like Battlefield

Battlefield 1942 was published before EA acquired DICE. So this is factually inaccurate. Do you think that after making Battlefield 1942 they would have just randomly stopped making battlefield games if they didn't sell to EA?

Also I haven't bothered to play any of the versions published by EA, except one time at one of those gaming LAN places. A friend had a 'bring a friend for free coupon' and he wanted to see how good I was at videogames. So we played some battlefield 2. I was unimpressed with it.

mkay, so you aren't a fan of the battlefield series. Your opinion and all that. If it really is that insiginficant then by all means go ahead and point me in the direction of other large scale warfare games that aren't absolutely dull to the point of Operation Flashpoint. I'm always taking suggestions.

or Dead Space?

I certainly wouldn't care. Never bothered to play it as it looked pretty bland, the reviews made it sound uninteresting and the main character looks kind of stupid.

Again, opinion. Doesn't discredit the game being rather successful.

Even the endless sports games that have their own following of loyal gamers?

Yes, because they had exclusive rights to make NFL games. If they didn't violate monopoly rights there would be plenty more 'endless sports games' from other devs.

Didn't stop Midway with their NFL blitz series. Kinda sad that died out.

Talk about narrow minded.

Yes because the non-narrow minded point of view is that if EA disappeared no studios would fill the void at all. And there would just be a dirth of gaming where people would go, well EA doesn't exist anymore so I guess lets just not make any games. And all the developers and writers would just go work at Starbucks.

It doesn't matter if someone is there to fill the gap, that's just giving more market share to fewer people and bringing us that much closer to absolute stagnation. It would also mean the withdrawal of every good franchise they put out. I know you probably wouldn't give a shit, but plenty of others do. If you can't see that then you're intentionally blinding yourself to justify your position.

Even if you dislike the games they've put out, they're still one of the main competitors for another juggernaut: Activision. And competition is always a good thing.

You think CoD is repetitive now? Imagine how dull/lifeless it would've been if EA wasn't around to even try. It could be soooo much worse than it is.

EA's attempts to beat CoD are to copy everything Activision-Blizard does, and then add jet planes and tanks. It's exactly as repetitive and unimaginative. I'm not saying it isn't good, but its definitely not a statement for gaming content diversity.

nice overgeneralizing there. What game was EA copying for Mass Effect that ActiBlizzard did first?

"EA's business practices suck! Online Passes are the devil!"
I won't call you entitled for having to deal with online passes... no matter how much that word is on the tip of my tongue. But instead I'll take us on a trip down memory lane.

Things were worse before is not an argument for things being good now. Please note: this is me pointing out that arguments about other things are not arguments about the subject at hand. I personally have no idea what online passes even are.

It's called "glass is half full". As long as the industry is slowly progressing rather than going backwards, I can handle a few potholes. You on the other hand...

Remember back in the Super Nintendo days? Multiplayer wasn't even a "thing" at the time. It was simply called "2 player", reserved for playing a game with you and your sibling (if you have one).

Multiplayer was a thing at the time for us PC gaming ubermensches.

Cute. And I'm sure it was as widespread then as it was now right?

Now look how far the technology has come. You can play with hundreds of people across the world seamlessly, something that 20 years ago would've been lumped together with the whole Flying Cars in the Future category.

Unless of course you count the fact that 2012 minus 20 is 1992 and the internet was already fully functioning in it's modern infrastructure by 1990. And before that there was what amounted to multiple functioning Internets dating back to the early 70s such as ARPANET and NSFNET that merely had different protocols and systems. Which were then standardized into the unified system that we have now.

Or the fact that flying cars already exist and are merely impractical and extremely expensive and thus haven't caught on.

The internet at large may have been intact 20 years ago, but it as hardly widespread or as commonly used as it is now. And with the exception of PC gaming which was even more of a minority then than it is now, multiplayer was not a thing. And it wasn't until the Dreamcast that it was even accessible for console users.

Gaming has come a long way, but it isn't perfect

Again, things were bad before, isn't the same as things are good now, or as good as they easily could be. Let me tell you a story to illustrate that:

snip'd

I'll pass on what I'm sure would've been a fascinating story, same point as before: Glass is half full.

DRM... ...[is] a trade off (you can thank piracy for that.

DRM is completely ineffective at stopping piracy. This isn't an argument for anything. There are almost always day one releases of pirated products. There are often releases before the product is even released to the general public. And I don't think I've ever seen a pirated release take longer than 3 days. DRM is the videogame equivalent of airport security, it stops no one(an investigative reporter bipassed security by walking in through an exit door.) Anyone who wants to bypass it can. The only people it hurts are the people who legitimately buy the product. As Gabe Newell and many others have pointed out: true piracy is a service problem. If you make your service superior to what pirates can provide, then people will give you money.

Until you can convince these companies to stop liking money, you will never convince them that DRM is not worth trying. It may not work on a widespread scale, but I'm sure it does slow down or stop a few pirates in their tracks. Using your own analogy with airport security, it won't stop those determined enough. But it will sure as hell stop the stupid ones.
and why even bring Newell into this? You seriously think the market could handle everyone adopting his business practices? Developers would buckle and more damage would be done overall, and piracy would still be around. Even Gabe can't fix human greed.

It opened a nice Pandora's Box that will never be closed. companies are never going to stop trying to defend their property, even if it doesn't work. get used to it.)

Other companies do it, isn't an argument for it not being really fucking stupid.

See above. It's here to stay, deal with it.

If I had to choose between going back to the 2 player way of things or dealing with registration codes... bring on them scrambled numbers and letters.

Yes, because those are totally the only two choices. Just like how in Soviet Era Russia they should never have complained because they could either deal with backbreaking work and starvation in collectivized farms or they could go back to a tyrannical Tsarist regime that shoots unarmed protestors. Because there are only ever two options right?

Perspective. Get some at your local Wal Mart. The industry is a hell of a lot better than it used to be and as gamers we can enjoy our hobby in ways that were previously impossible. But you'd rather focus on the few negatives for all of the advancements we take for granted. This is getting old, but again: Glass is half full.

 

[Vigormortis]

First point: EA, as a corporation, needs to make money. Why? They are a publicly owned company, with shareholders. If they start losing a lot of money, shareholders will abandon the company, resulting in layoffs.

Valve is a corporation too. They offer free content, free updates, free games, free modding tools and monthly sales that can usually go down to a 75% off.

Yet... they're making a bejesus amount of money. With the recent addition of the new Steam Greenlight service, I'm surprised EA even has customers.

And how much of the free content, free games, free modding tools, and monthly sales are for Valve games? Not many, with the exception of a couple Left 4 Dead sales, a couple Portal sales, and the fact that Team Fortress 2 went F2P about 4 years after it came out. You have a point with the free updates for TF2, though.

There are differences between Valve and EA, though. First, Valve is not a publicly owned corporation, with shareholders. Secondly, no matter what they do, gamers love them, while EA can't say a word without gamers twisting them. I'm not saying that EA is better than Valve, but as you said, they are both corporations. Valve just has better PR.

I'm sorry, but what in the hell are you on about?

ALL of the free content, free games, modding tools, and sales coming directly from Valve are on Valve games.

It's a regular occurrence to see Valve's games go on sale for ridiculously low prices.

Every update, patch, and content pack for every game Valve has ever released have been free. With a few exceptions for some of their console titles.

Valve has almost no PR. It's rare for them to come out and make public statements beyond the odd interview with Gabe Newell or blog posts made on the official sites of some of their game titles.

....................

No one is trying to argue that EA is evil because it's a corporation out to make money. Well, most of us aren't. So stop trying to use the rather weak counter-argument that "it's a corporation just like everyone else".

That isn't what bothers us. It's the things EA does as a corporation that make us dislike them.

Like I said in my first post in this thread:

Spoiler

Anyway, on topic:

No OP, you're right. EA is not inherently "evil".

However, they are woefully incompetent and obnoxiously malicious in their general business practices.

We're talking about a company that has given real credence to ideas like charging for bullets in Battlefield 3 or content locking console games unless people paid extra fees. (ideas brought up in Project $10 that later became the Online Pass)

I'm not even going to go into their incredibly annoying, idiotic, insulting, unprofessional, and childish advertisement and PR departments.

So no, EA is not "evil". It is, however, a terrible company that is more than deserving of much of the ire it receives.

Oh, and listen people. It is okay to dislike EA and still love games like Mass Effect and Battlefield. In fact, if you're fans of games published under EA you should be even more angry than those who aren't fans, given that EA, in most cases, systematically ruins the franchises you love.

Just because someone says they don't like EA it doesn't mean they dislike games published by them.

I, like others around here, have fond memories of EA from years ago. They were a company that, while certainly not quite admirable, often went that extra mile to bring amazing content to the players.

Sadly, they are not that company anymore.

 

[Pearwood]

X

The porn game's the most recent example, I do remember hearing similar stories popping up now and then though. I just don't believe that Steam having such a strong presence on PC digital distribution is healthy for small developers. I know the reason behind the long development time but the point is it's too long. You can't expect your fanbase to listen to your explanations as though they were your publisher, consumers only care about final products. But yeah I'm not anti-Valve, I'm just pointing out that any company can and should be criticised.

 

[Mycroft Holmes]

Then how come it seems to be EA drawing the ire of everyone? I'm a fan of giving credit where it's due, good or bad, so where's the incessant whining for every little thing done by every developer ever? Or does EA being slightly worse than the rest give everyone a free pass?

? Bandwagoning, it's the popular thing to do.
? EA is a bigger company than most and consequently more people talk about it.
? EA has been doing it for longer than most other companies.
? In the past month I have heard people complain about business practices of Bethesda, Valve, Activision Blizzard, Lucas Arts and Zynga. Perhaps stop living under a rock?

Sorry, no. Alot of their main franchises like Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Battlefield, Dead Space etc. have large enough fanbases that for every naysayer you find you could probably dig up someone who enjoyed it. But that would require work, and we all know the bitching gamer is the one who gets heard, not the content one.

There will always be people who enjoy a game even when it's bad, and because its highly publicized there's bound to be a good number of them. But when a game is bad, its going to have a lot more people who dislike it. Like the Dragon Age series. If your argument is that a plurality of people liked Dragon Age 2, then you're seriously delusional. Sales data, user review averages, sales sustainability and every other possible metric for judging whether or not people think they ruined the series: disagrees with you.

mkay, so you aren't a fan of the battlefield series. Your opinion and all that. If it really is that insiginficant then by all means go ahead and point me in the direction of other large scale warfare games that aren't absolutely dull to the point of Operation Flashpoint. I'm always taking suggestions.

I highly enjoyed Battlefield 1942. I stopped paying attention to the series the moment they started removing the very things that made it awesome simply because they were buggy. Naval combat was awesome despite how buggy it was. But that's irrelevant because again Battlefield 1942 was developed without EA's help.

I actually played the beta or what-not of 2142 and it seemed fun enough, but I never bothered to buy it. I was probably busy with another game that I found more fun at the time.

I also wouldn't say Battlefield games are insignificant even now. I would probably be willing to buy Battlefield 3(or at least try it) if it wasn't for their requirement that I also install origin.

Again, opinion. Doesn't discredit the game being rather successful.

Who said it did? I just said I wouldn't care if EA did or didn't contribute that game to the marketplace. So your two example argument contained. 1) A game series that EA didn't create. And 2) A game that I don't personally care about, and know 0 people who played it.

It doesn't matter if someone is there to fill the gap, that's just giving more market share to fewer people and bringing us that much closer to absolute stagnation.

Because one production company dissolving and all the devs under them going independent would give the market share to fewer people? What? There are about 30 developers under EA. About 10 of them were independent studios that EA bought. Assuming that everyone just quits the videogame industry who is from a EA studio. You really don't think those 10 studios would just reform into new companies? And follow with me but which is fewer, 1 person or 10 people?

There's already more programmers graduating than companies are hiring. The other large production companies aren't magically just going to snap up all of EA's work force. And what do you think a bunch of out of work programmers, managers, artists, writers and project directors are going to do? They are going to form new companies.

It would also mean the withdrawal of every good franchise they put out.

Just like how there have been no Fallout games since BIS folded. Man if only there were some Fallout games that came out after Fallout Tactics and Fallout 2. Its such a shame we live in a fantasy world where IPs never get sold and reproduced by different talent. Hey does anyone know if there's a new Syndicate and XCOM out?

If you can't see that then you're intentionally blinding yourself to justify your position.

You're right, I've blinded myself with the idea that life goes on and creative/talented people will continue to create quality products with or without EA. You've made me come to grips with the reality that the gaming industry would just grind to a halt and no one would know how to fund projects anymore if EA wasn't around.

nice overgeneralizing there. What game was EA copying for Mass Effect that ActiBlizzard did first?

A couple things:

I don't know, because that's something I never said, because someone with reading comprehension skills would read: "EA's attempts to beat CoD are to copy everything Activision-Blizard does, and then add jet planes and tanks. It's exactly as repetitive and unimaginative. I'm not saying it isn't good, but its definitely not a statement for gaming content diversity." and then use their knowledge of basic things to realize that CoD is the short hand for Call of Duty. Then they would realize that the subject is EA's attempt to dethrone the Call of Duty franchize and not bring up IPs that have nothing to do with that subject. Because presumably they are familiar with logical fallacies and aren't fond of stating straw-man arguments.

Unfortunately none of that happened. So I have to reexplain. We are talking about Call of Duty. EA's attempts to take away Call of Duties market base is to copy everything in Call of Duty, place it in their Battlefield series and then add vehicles. Which I will reiterate is not really much of a competitive-creative market.

And finally, holy shit dude:
MASS EFFECT. WAS. NOT. CREATED. BY. EA.
It was not made by a company EA created.
It was not made by a company EA owned.
It was not funded by EA.
It was not developed by EA.
It was not originally distributed by EA.

Mass Effect was created by Bioware, before EA bought them. It was distributed and produced by Microsoft Game Studios. So ignoring the fact that no one was even alluding to Mass Effect. It would be impossible for EA to copy another studio when they created Mass Effect. Because they did not create Mass Effect.

It's called "glass is half full". As long as the industry is slowly progressing rather than going backwards, I can handle a few potholes. You on the other hand...

Other studios seem to be 'progressing' at a much faster rate. Except Ubisoft and Zynga really, but there's room for more idiots than EA in the software industry. Also I was one of those people playing videogames long before it was popular and I can honestly say that everything was way better from a policy standpoint 15 years ago, than it is currently with EA.

Cute. And I'm sure it was as widespread then as it was now right?

Percent-wise of total population? Yep just about, Its probably moved up maybe 2-4%. But that's likely because most people playing PC games back then tended to be technophiles. If your argument is that literally more people do it now than before, then that's a false argument. Number of gamers has gone up.

You could use the same argument. To say that homosexuality is spreading because in 500 AD there weren't nearly as many homosexuals as now. Which would ignore the fact that % wise its probably about the same and total population has merely gone up.

The internet at large may have been intact 20 years ago, but it as hardly widespread or as commonly used as it is now.

That's cool but you said it was viewed as a pipe dream. Which is patently untrue.

And with the exception of PC gaming which was even more of a minority then than it is now, multiplayer was not a thing. And it wasn't until the Dreamcast that it was even accessible for console users.[/b]

If you're speaking about multiplayer as multiple players more than 2, then plenty of consoles did. I played golden eye with four players in 1997. If you're speaking about the internet being used in multiplayer then how is that still an argument for shitty quality. There's plenty of examples of networking done correctly.

I'll pass on what I'm sure would've been a fascinating story, same point as before: Glass is half full.

Thank you for again missing the point. It's not that EA does things better than people did 30 years ago. A couple college students working part time on an Indi game usually manage produce products better than what was around 30 years ago. It's that I can name a dozen studios just off the top of my head that do things better than EA does now, despite EA having more resources. This isn't a contest of EA versus the past it's EA versus contemporary competitors.

Which is something I'm actually starting to find myself doubting that you would have realized even if you had actually read the story.

Until you can convince these companies to stop liking money, you will never convince them that DRM is not worth trying.

That's cool but your argument is that EA is not a shitty company. Saying everyone does it, isn't an argument that they aren't shitty. Also there's a difference between DRM types EA tends to do shittier DRM than the average which is thusly my argument. They aren't as bad as Ubisoft on that front though, at least there's that.

It may not work on a widespread scale, but I'm sure it does slow down or stop a few pirates in their tracks.

I'm sure it slows some hackers. Unfortunately it only takes one hacker breaking through to make it absolutely available to all 'pirates.'

Using your own analogy with airport security, it won't stop those determined enough. But it will sure as hell stop the stupid ones.

My analogy of the airport only works for the explanation of how it's impossible to stop pirating games. It had nothing to do with the distribution of pirated games.

Very talented and determined people view DRM as a challenge. They wait for a game to be released and then they work in teams to break the code, often competing with each other to be the first to crack the code as it were. That is what DRM is designed to stop that is what airport security is in that metaphor; but that is where the metaphor breaks for the purposes of determining consequences. Because once the hard part is actually done everyone else basically gets to walk in for free. Because even an idiot can download UTorrent and then google the 'Mass Effect 3 torrent.' And even if oh no they might try to grab your IP. Guess you'll just have to do another two clicks and get peerblock.

and why even bring Newell into this? You seriously think the market could handle everyone adopting his business practices? Developers would buckle and more damage would be done overall, and piracy would still be around. Even Gabe can't fix human greed.

1) Why wouldn't I? His point is valid and has been proven so in many other industries. Oh no the cassette tape scare. And the VCR/VHS scare.
2) They wouldn't buckle at all. The people who already steal the games would continue to steal them. Those who don't would continue to not do so. And the people who steal games because they don't like spyware being put on their computers, and poorly made CPU hogging programs that make your performance tank, wouldn't have a giant reason to steal the product and might actually buy it for a change.

Perspective. Get some at your local Wal Mart. The industry is a hell of a lot better than it used to be and as gamers we can enjoy our hobby in ways that were previously impossible. But you'd rather focus on the few negatives for all of the advancements we take for granted. This is getting old, but again: Glass is half full.

[/quote]

We are talking about one company not the whole industry. We are comparing this company to other companies. EA comes up lacking when compared to a lot of companies. The argument in this thread has nothing to do with EA vs other companies from 20 years ago. But if you seriously want to take it down that path. My experience with the gaming industry has been getting steadily worse since the 90s and early 2000s. I say gaming industry because there are still a few companies that do shit right.

I used to be able to simply install a game and play it online or offline, by myself, with others, on LAN, on the internet. The experience was mine and I was allowed to enjoy it how I wanted to.

Now I have to install spyware on my computer to have the privledge of playing some games. Now if I have to redownload it twice, EA repossesses the game and makes me buy it again. Now I'm not allowed to play on my LAN. Now if a studio fucks up then I'm not allowed to play my singleplayer game. Nowadays half the games have intrusive Securom or Tages that actively throttles my computers performance, and have notably locked people out of games before. Now we have Bnet 2.0 where all the features were removed in favor of ability to sync with your Facebook account, a feature that I heard exactly 0 people asking for.

So no, I don't exactly see the continuous stripping of functionality out of my games to be particularly a 'hell of a lot better.'

 

[El Chiwawa Loco]

They killed Pandemic, they'll always be evil to me

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

Here's a fresh batch of rage for anyone who looked forward to Insomniac's new IP - Overstrike.

It went from this:


To this:


Of course that is entirely Insomniac's doing. The publisher which brought out Vin Diesel and Blade cutouts when they were being pitched Timesplitters, would surely never force someone to rebrand a stylized, humorous game into some generic grimdark pulp.

Surely.

I was going to say something about EA, but then I remembered that Englishman who had his life ruined because he jokingly threatened to blow up an airport. So I'm just going to keep my mouth shut. Not a word. Ziiip.

 

[Aeonknight]

Then how come it seems to be EA drawing the ire of everyone? I'm a fan of giving credit where it's due, good or bad, so where's the incessant whining for every little thing done by every developer ever? Or does EA being slightly worse than the rest give everyone a free pass?

? Bandwagoning, it's the popular thing to do.
? EA is a bigger company than most and consequently more people talk about it.
? EA has been doing it for longer than most other companies.
? In the past month I have heard people complain about business practices of Bethesda, Valve, Activision Blizzard, Lucas Arts and Zynga. Perhaps stop living under a rock?

Are you seriously trying to insinuate that the 1 or 2 complaints about those developers is anywhere near on the scale of how many people ***** about EA? Despite alot of them sharing the same business practices? Go take a look at that poll in the other thread again.

Sorry, no. Alot of their main franchises like Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Battlefield, Dead Space etc. have large enough fanbases that for every naysayer you find you could probably dig up someone who enjoyed it. But that would require work, and we all know the bitching gamer is the one who gets heard, not the content one.

There will always be people who enjoy a game even when it's bad, and because its highly publicized there's bound to be a good number of them. But when a game is bad, its going to have a lot more people who dislike it. Like the Dragon Age series. If your argument is that a plurality of people liked Dragon Age 2, then you're seriously delusional. Sales data, user review averages, sales sustainability and every other possible metric for judging whether or not people think they ruined the series: disagrees with you.

Next thing you're going to tell me is that their Metacritic scores matter, right? Hell using the sales numbers and such like you say is a measurement of game quality, all of those franchises I listed above sold well. But somehow they're ruined forever? Which is it then? There's also the issue of who's really responsible for killing a franchise, but I'll get to that in a minute.

mkay, so you aren't a fan of the battlefield series. Your opinion and all that. If it really is that insiginficant then by all means go ahead and point me in the direction of other large scale warfare games that aren't absolutely dull to the point of Operation Flashpoint. I'm always taking suggestions.

I highly enjoyed Battlefield 1942. I stopped paying attention to the series the moment they started removing the very things that made it awesome simply because they were buggy. Naval combat was awesome despite how buggy it was. But that's irrelevant because again Battlefield 1942 was developed without EA's help.

I actually played the beta or what-not of 2142 and it seemed fun enough, but I never bothered to buy it. I was probably busy with another game that I found more fun at the time.

I also wouldn't say Battlefield games are insignificant even now. I would probably be willing to buy Battlefield 3(or at least try it) if it wasn't for their requirement that I also install origin.

Fair enough.

Again, opinion. Doesn't discredit the game being rather successful.

Who said it did? I just said I wouldn't care if EA did or didn't contribute that game to the marketplace. So your two example argument contained. 1) A game series that EA didn't create. And 2) A game that I don't personally care about, and know 0 people who played it.

So your answer to EA deserving to be shut down despite contributing games that others enjoyed is "meh don't care, didn't like personally"? How delightfully apathetic of you.

It doesn't matter if someone is there to fill the gap, that's just giving more market share to fewer people and bringing us that much closer to absolute stagnation.

Because one production company dissolving and all the devs under them going independent would give the market share to fewer people? What? There are about 30 developers under EA. About 10 of them were independent studios that EA bought. Assuming that everyone just quits the videogame industry who is from a EA studio. You really don't think those 10 studios would just reform into new companies? And follow with me but which is fewer, 1 person or 10 people?

There's already more programmers graduating than companies are hiring. The other large production companies aren't magically just going to snap up all of EA's work force. And what do you think a bunch of out of work programmers, managers, artists, writers and project directors are going to do? They are going to form new companies.

And who's to say any of those hypothetical 10 companies would be worth a damn? Or not get stomped out by current competitors?

But really, we're both argueing a moot point here.

It would also mean the withdrawal of every good franchise they put out.

Just like how there have been no Fallout games since BIS folded. Man if only there were some Fallout games that came out after Fallout Tactics and Fallout 2. Its such a shame we live in a fantasy world where IPs never get sold and reproduced by different talent. Hey does anyone know if there's a new Syndicate and XCOM out?

Was more or less in reference to said moot point above. As in how the market would look without the games (yes I know not all of them were started by EA, but alot of them were at least funded afterwards to continue the franchises.)

If you can't see that then you're intentionally blinding yourself to justify your position.

You're right, I've blinded myself with the idea that life goes on and creative/talented people will continue to create quality products with or without EA. You've made me come to grips with the reality that the gaming industry would just grind to a halt and no one would know how to fund projects anymore if EA wasn't around.

The words you put in my mouth don't taste very good sir... good job taking this phrase out of context.

The proper context was how the games that EA has helped put in our hands (figuratively speaking) did contribute overall to the industry, not do irreperable damage. But you've already demonstrated apathy on the subject so I guess rather than blinded, you're just apathetic and petty. But that's ok, so am I.

nice overgeneralizing there. What game was EA copying for Mass Effect that ActiBlizzard did first?

A couple things:

I don't know, because that's something I never said, because someone with reading comprehension skills would read: "EA's attempts to beat CoD are to copy everything Activision-Blizard does, and then add jet planes and tanks. It's exactly as repetitive and unimaginative. I'm not saying it isn't good, but its definitely not a statement for gaming content diversity." and then use their knowledge of basic things to realize that CoD is the short hand for Call of Duty. Then they would realize that the subject is EA's attempt to dethrone the Call of Duty franchize and not bring up IPs that have nothing to do with that subject. Because presumably they are familiar with logical fallacies and aren't fond of stating straw-man arguments.

Unfortunately none of that happened. So I have to reexplain. We are talking about Call of Duty. EA's attempts to take away Call of Duties market base is to copy everything in Call of Duty, place it in their Battlefield series and then add vehicles. Which I will reiterate is not really much of a competitive-creative market.

And finally, holy shit dude:
MASS EFFECT. WAS. NOT. CREATED. BY. EA.
It was not made by a company EA created.
It was not made by a company EA owned.
It was not funded by EA.
It was not developed by EA.
It was not originally distributed by EA.

Mass Effect was created by Bioware, before EA bought them. It was distributed and produced by Microsoft Game Studios. So ignoring the fact that no one was even alluding to Mass Effect. It would be impossible for EA to copy another studio when they created Mass Effect. Because they did not create Mass Effect.

Actually I was trying to give you an easy way out of the arguement, but if you insist:

Any person with a brain can list a myriad of differences between CoD and BF as a series, both from how mechanics work, map design, playstyles, physics, and yes even tanks/jets. To overgeneralize that the 2 games are the same simply because of guns is just plain ignorant. When was the last time you blew up a wall someone was hiding behind in CoD? I thought so.


Remember when I said I'd be getting on to a certain point later on? About who's really responsible for killing a franchise? Well as you so adamantly stated, EA didn't make mass effect.
Then why were these very forums raging harder than any I've ever seen before, with 90% of it directed as being EA's fault? And before you come up with excuses as to why it's their fault, try to remember you just said it's Bioware's baby. I don't wanna hear bullshit like "oh EA rushed Bioware", because that's every fucking developer ever. They get rushed everytime a major release is due and as you can see, not every game flops that badly.

To be honest though, I'd prefer you not answer that. Didn't play mass effect, didn't care for the franchise as a whole. Sound familiar yet?

It's called "glass is half full". As long as the industry is slowly progressing rather than going backwards, I can handle a few potholes. You on the other hand...

Other studios seem to be 'progressing' at a much faster rate. Except Ubisoft and Zynga really, but there's room for more idiots than EA in the software industry. Also I was one of those people playing videogames long before it was popular and I can honestly say that everything was way better from a policy standpoint 15 years ago, than it is currently with EA.

You're not the only one "old timer". But 15 years ago policies didn't mean jack shit because it had no bearing on the product. Who cares if they were "better", they were insignificant. Nowadays developers have a little more control, we have more access/functionality in some ways, less than others. Dealing with DRM sucks, patching is quite handy (sometimes). Unless you wanna tell me Lufia 2 was better all bugged out and such?

Cute. And I'm sure it was as widespread then as it was now right?

Percent-wise of total population? Yep just about, Its probably moved up maybe 2-4%. But that's likely because most people playing PC games back then tended to be technophiles. If your argument is that literally more people do it now than before, then that's a false argument. Number of gamers has gone up.

You could use the same argument. To say that homosexuality is spreading because in 500 AD there weren't nearly as many homosexuals as now. Which would ignore the fact that % wise its probably about the same and total population has merely gone up.

The internet at large may have been intact 20 years ago, but it as hardly widespread or as commonly used as it is now.

That's cool but you said it was viewed as a pipe dream. Which is patently untrue.

Tell that to a super nintendo player back in the day.

And with the exception of PC gaming which was even more of a minority then than it is now, multiplayer was not a thing. And it wasn't until the Dreamcast that it was even accessible for console users.[/b]

If you're speaking about multiplayer as multiple players more than 2, then plenty of consoles did. I played golden eye with four players in 1997. If you're speaking about the internet being used in multiplayer then how is that still an argument for shitty quality. There's plenty of examples of networking done correctly.

I'll pass on what I'm sure would've been a fascinating story, same point as before: Glass is half full.

Thank you for again missing the point. It's not that EA does things better than people did 30 years ago. A couple college students working part time on an Indi game usually manage produce products better than what was around 30 years ago. It's that I can name a dozen studios just off the top of my head that do things better than EA does now, despite EA having more resources. This isn't a contest of EA versus the past it's EA versus contemporary competitors.

Which is something I'm actually starting to find myself doubting that you would have realized even if you had actually read the story.

Until you can convince these companies to stop liking money, you will never convince them that DRM is not worth trying.

That's cool but your argument is that EA is not a shitty company. Saying everyone does it, isn't an argument that they aren't shitty. Also there's a difference between DRM types EA tends to do shittier DRM than the average which is thusly my argument. They aren't as bad as Ubisoft on that front though, at least there's that.

At what point did I say EA was not a shitty company? Go ahead and find that quote for me, I'm lazy and have 10 minutes before work. If you take a closer read, I'm more or less arguing that while they may not be the best, they don't deserve to be destroyed. I don't wish that on any developer.

It may not work on a widespread scale, but I'm sure it does slow down or stop a few pirates in their tracks.

I'm sure it slows some hackers. Unfortunately it only takes one hacker breaking through to make it absolutely available to all 'pirates.'

I know as soon as 1 figures it out, the rest will follow. But I'm also sure there are a few who are still incapable of doing that. Having the door unlocked is not the same as leaving the door wide open.

Using your own analogy with airport security, it won't stop those determined enough. But it will sure as hell stop the stupid ones.

My analogy of the airport only works for the explanation of how it's impossible to stop pirating games. It had nothing to do with the distribution of pirated games.

Very talented and determined people view DRM as a challenge. They wait for a game to be released and then they work in teams to break the code, often competing with each other to be the first to crack the code as it were. That is what DRM is designed to stop that is what airport security is in that metaphor; but that is where the metaphor breaks for the purposes of determining consequences. Because once the hard part is actually done everyone else basically gets to walk in for free. Because even an idiot can download UTorrent and then google the 'Mass Effect 3 torrent.' And even if oh no they might try to grab your IP. Guess you'll just have to do another two clicks and get peerblock.

I'm sure you could cruise facebook for awhile and fine plenty of people with no idea wtf a Torrent is.

and why even bring Newell into this? You seriously think the market could handle everyone adopting his business practices? Developers would buckle and more damage would be done overall, and piracy would still be around. Even Gabe can't fix human greed.

1) Why wouldn't I? His point is valid and has been proven so in many other industries. Oh no the cassette tape scare. And the VCR/VHS scare.
2) They wouldn't buckle at all. The people who already steal the games would continue to steal them. Those who don't would continue to not do so. And the people who steal games because they don't like spyware being put on their computers, and poorly made CPU hogging programs that make your performance tank, wouldn't have a giant reason to steal the product and might actually buy it for a change.

Except Valve has Steam to use to peddle it's wares at dirt cheap prices. You're not going to make money if you're selling games for 5 bucks and still trying to stock shelves, you'd lose money for every copy you produced.

Perspective. Get some at your local Wal Mart. The industry is a hell of a lot better than it used to be and as gamers we can enjoy our hobby in ways that were previously impossible. But you'd rather focus on the few negatives for all of the advancements we take for granted. This is getting old, but again: Glass is half full.

We are talking about one company not the whole industry. We are comparing this company to other companies. EA comes up lacking when compared to a lot of companies. The argument in this thread has nothing to do with EA vs other companies from 20 years ago. But if you seriously want to take it down that path. My experience with the gaming industry has been getting steadily worse since the 90s and early 2000s. I say gaming industry because there are still a few companies that do shit right.

I used to be able to simply install a game and play it online or offline, by myself, with others, on LAN, on the internet. The experience was mine and I was allowed to enjoy it how I wanted to.

Now I have to install spyware on my computer to have the privledge of playing some games. Now if I have to redownload it twice, EA repossesses the game and makes me buy it again. Now I'm not allowed to play on my LAN. Now if a studio fucks up then I'm not allowed to play my singleplayer game. Nowadays half the games have intrusive Securom or Tages that actively throttles my computers performance, and have notably locked people out of games before. Now we have Bnet 2.0 where all the features were removed in favor of ability to sync with your Facebook account, a feature that I heard exactly 0 people asking for.

So no, I don't exactly see the continuous stripping of functionality out of my games to be particularly a 'hell of a lot better.'

Sounds like a PC gamer problem. Last I checked I could still pop in a console game and the my "biggest issue" is remembering my password. But rather than stir up the age old console vs PC arguement more than I have already, I'll just go with steam. You're been there from the beginning, I'm sure you can remember when digital distribution was barely coming around, and how fucking terrible it was @ the start. Even you can't deny it's gotten better over time. Sure some things have gotten worse, but that's the trade off. there's nothing wrong with asking for more, but try not to forget the good that you currently have while you're doing it.
[/quote]

 

[Vigormortis]

X

The porn game's the most recent example, I do remember hearing similar stories popping up now and then though. I just don't believe that Steam having such a strong presence on PC digital distribution is healthy for small developers. I know the reason behind the long development time but the point is it's too long. You can't expect your fanbase to listen to your explanations as though they were your publisher, consumers only care about final products. But yeah I'm not anti-Valve, I'm just pointing out that any company can and should be criticised.

Oh, I'm all for criticizing corporations and companies for the things they do. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying any company, or any miscellaneous group of people, is above criticism.

I was just saying that the things you were pointing out were part of a wide range of complaints many on this forum levy against Valve; complaints that are often based on misinformation and presumptions. Not that I'm implying yours were, mind you. Just that they are similar to many that are. So if my previous post seemed like a personal confrontation, I apologize. It was not meant to be.

Anyway, I'm not sure I can agree with you on the idea that Valve's position within the digital distribution arena is somehow inherently detrimental to small developers. Saying such is almost the same as saying Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo are inherently dangerous to small developers.

At face value, that seems like it's often the case. But there are plenty of open platforms, especially on the PC, in which small developers can release their content. No one is forcing them to use Steam. It's not as though they require Steam to be successful. There've been plenty of small, aspiring developers that have proven success isn't reliant on having your game on Steam.

Now, if Valve somehow, by some miraculous circumstance, manages to garner a "monopoly" on the PC market with Steam, I can see the argument you've brought to the table. And, while it wouldn't necessarily mean that Valve would make it more difficult for indie devs to release their content, it wouldn't necessarily they couldn't make it more difficult.

That said, I do at times share the frustration in their release schedule. However, I don't sit around on bated breath waiting for just one game. The games industry now-a-days has so much to offer at any given time I can find plenty of ways to quench my thirst for gaming entertainment. I'm not reliant on one developer to bring me the games I enjoy.

So, while I'm still eagerly...frustratingly...waiting for Half-Life 3, I've got plenty to keep me entertained. (like Torchlight 2, in only 2 days ;D )

Besides, I'd rather a game take a hefty length of time to release instead of being rushed if it means the game is completed with the highest level of quality.

As Shigeru Miyamoto once said, "A delayed game is eventually good. A bad game is forever."

 

[Tortilla the Hun]

Funny that...I was actually going on with someone I know with a rant bout how tiring all the hatred toward EA is getting. I thank you, and all who support this opinion, for freshening up things around here.

 

[Mycroft Holmes]

Firstly: dude, learn to format quotes.
Secondly:

Are you seriously trying to insinuate that the 1 or 2 complaints about those developers is anywhere near on the scale of how many people ***** about EA? Despite alot of them sharing the same business practices? Go take a look at that poll in the other thread again.

That poll is for who is the worst. Which is why it is slanted against EA. I would rather it be slanted against Ubi"enemies are everywhere"soft because they are worse than EA. But EA is a pretty fair runner up. The poll is not for what companies do people complain about.

If EA was 80% awful policies and Sega was 79% awful policies. Then there would theoretically in a world of people perfectly capable of logic and reason be a poll as equally slanted against EA. But people would have nearly the same opinions of both companies. My point isn't EA is 80% awful or that Sega is 79%, my point is that when you're dealing with a 'who is the worst' scenario it doesn't mean other companies are hated that much less.

Next thing you're going to tell me is that their Metacritic scores matter, right?

Metacritic is basically a function of how well known your company is plus how much money you pay out to various reviewers. My argument was about user reviews which often tank on games that are bad/fail to live up to their predecessors like Diablo 3 or Dragon Age 2.

Hell using the sales numbers and such like you say is a measurement of game quality, all of those franchises I listed above sold well.

The question isn't will they sell well. A game from a well-known company will almost always sell well unless there's a reason to distrust them. For example:

Dragon Age started out relatively low and quickly gained speed. Because a few people bought it, and then told everyone else that it was good, because it is. Conversely Dragon Age 2 started out higher because people were familiar with the series. This is even more telling because people were shit-talking DA 2 before it even came out just on what developers and writers were saying. But just on reputation of the first game alone more people bought it on day one. But it quickly leveled out and finished far behind the origional, because people don't like it as much. It's not as subjectively fun for people to play. We can then extrapolate that because the 2nd game was not well received, unless the PR campaign is very good(scuttlebutt says doubtful) it will likely have opening sales below even the first game.

For contrast, Mass Effect was a popular game originally and thus the sales were good. But the second game outsold it because it was good as well and had the reputation from the original. The third game however which people didn't like for a variety of reasons did not sell as well despite the build up, the fan base and the reputation.

You can't necessarily judge how well a product is received by pure sales, which is why it's unfortunate that I couldn't find a similar graph for my Mass Effect Point. What you judge by is the trend in sustainability of sales. If people don't like it, that number is going to very rapidly drop off. If people do like it, its going to pick up quickly.

But somehow they're ruined forever?

I wouldn't say any franchise has been ruined forever. Although Mass Effect 3 went someplace really weird that didn't really hold with the tone or build up of the rest of the series. Although I suppose if they make the cannon ending the destroy one, they could recover pretty well.

Which is it then? There's also the issue of who's really responsible for killing a franchise, but I'll get to that in a minute.

I don't really care who 'killed' the franchise. People make good games and they make bad games. If it's bad I usually don't play it. If it's good then I will pay for it. For every franchise that makes a misstep there's a new game or a new IP that is worthwhile. (I mean that's not technically true because there's a lot of shitty games, but my point is that there's plenty of good ones as well. So crying over the shitty ones isn't worth my time.)

Fair enough.

Also forgot to give suggestions if you truly are interested. I'm making an assumption because I highly enjoyed the original Planetside, that Planetside 2 will be a lot of fun. I'm not in beta so I really have no way of knowing. But being in Planetside 1 standing on a hillside with 100 other players firing down onto a base with a similar number of players firing back. Dozens of reavers circling overhead, an armored column moving towards the enemy base entrance, a couple galaxies dumping players over-top of their base. Watching them stream down inside as they take AA fire. As 500 some-odd people maneuver all over a battlefield, setting up hard points with lockdown mechs, infiltrating and disabling enemy machinery, strike teams break into sally ports, engineers struggle to keep base defenses online, fighters escort a galaxy carrying an ANT with precious energy resources for the base. Beats the ever loving shit out of Battlefield's 64 player maximum.

So your answer to EA deserving to be shut down despite contributing games that others enjoyed is "meh don't care, didn't like personally"? How delightfully apathetic of you.

No my direct answer to your question is that I don't care. My argument is that the people who made those games aren't going to evaporate if EA goes bankrupt and dissolves. They are going to go on making fun games. And the ones that you already enjoy will be bought by some other company and they will make sequels.

And who's to say any of those hypothetical 10 companies would be worth a damn? Or not get stomped out by current competitors?

The fact that they are the ones who made the games you keep saying you enjoy. And the presumable fact that they wouldn't become brain damaged and forget everything they know just because they stop working for EA. Unless of course EA implants chips into their brains that wipe their memories if they leave EA... oh God is that what happens?

Was more or less in reference to said moot point above. As in how the market would look without the games (yes I know not all of them were started by EA, but alot of them were at least funded afterwards to continue the franchises.)

Have you ever heard the term life abhors a vacuum? We'll so does capitalism. There are people buying X number of games who like different styles of games. Studios and publishers are always forming and the gaming market is highly competitive. Dissolved parts of EA would definitely reform into other studios and the games and franchises would continue to get made.

Also lets be clear, I don't really want EA to die, I just want them to stop being titanic dicks. But I personally see no problem with EA dying either.

The words you put in my mouth don't taste very good sir... good job taking this phrase out of context.

The proper context was how the games that EA has helped put in our hands (figuratively speaking) did contribute overall to the industry, not do irreperable damage. But you've already demonstrated apathy on the subject so I guess rather than blinded, you're just apathetic and petty. But that's ok, so am I.

It's not taken out of context at all. Your argument implies that if EA didn't exist then there would just be a giant dirth of activity that EA once filled. That's a ridiculous assumption.

Any person with a brain can list a myriad of differences between CoD and BF as a series, both from how mechanics work, map design, playstyles, physics, and yes even tanks/jets. To overgeneralize that the 2 games are the same simply because of guns is just plain ignorant.

Yes because that's the only similarity. Guns.

CoD invented/standardized iron sights in modern videogames. Battlefield copied.
CoD invented/standardized exp systems in modern videogames. Battlefield copied.
CoD invented/standardized unlockables in modern videogames. Battlefield copied.
CoD invented/standardized highly scripted singleplayer in modern videogames. Battlefield copied.

Pretty sure battlefield now also has a secondary knife swipe attack exactly like Call of Duty created. DICE copied the sniper level from Call of Duty. DICE copied the artillery plane/UAV sequences. DICE copied the breach and clear sequences. DICE copied repelling sequences. Like none of these things are even that creative, its just copying stuff from real life an movies. Which is why you would think that battlefield 3 would have at least done one of them first, except they didn't. Because Activision Blizzard does something. People like it. So EA immediately attempts to emulate it.

Battlefield invented throwing carriers and planes everywhere and it was awesome. They should have just stuck to their strengths instead of trying to make the games as visually and mechanically similar as they could possibly do without getting sued.

When was the last time you blew up a wall someone was hiding behind in CoD? I thought so.

2006 maybe 2007. Wait, was that the answer you were looking for? Because it kind of sounds like you didn't realize that CoD already had that back in 2004.

Remember when I said I'd be getting on to a certain point later on? About who's really responsible for killing a franchise? Well as you so adamantly stated, EA didn't make mass effect.
Then why were these very forums raging harder than any I've ever seen before, with 90% of it directed as being EA's fault? And before you come up with excuses as to why it's their fault, try to remember you just said it's Bioware's baby. I don't wanna hear bullshit like "oh EA rushed Bioware", because that's every fucking developer ever. They get rushed everytime a major release is due and as you can see, not every game flops that badly.

To be honest though, I'd prefer you not answer that. Didn't play mass effect, didn't care for the franchise as a whole. Sound familiar yet?

My answer has nothing to do with Mass Effect it's self. It has everything to do with understanding that EA is culpable/can take credit for what it does, but is not culpable/can not take credit for what it does not do.

EA gets zero credit for creating Mass Effect, because It did not in any way contribute at all to creating Mass Effect. Therefore they can't say hey look at how we make creative new IPs we are good for the industry. However EA did produce the last two Mass Effect's and thus is responsible for the content in them. Thus it is perfectly possible for them to have ruined a franchise that they did not create. In fact I can give you several examples of that happening such as to OSI and to Bullfrog, both of which EA fully admits they fucked up on.

In this case people blame EA because of EA's visible and noted reputation for having done it in the past. Most people however agree that by and large ME3 was a good game with good writing except the ending which is the part people bitched about saying that EA ruined it. Which is not true at all, it was some dude named Mac Walters and management who gave him control over the ending without input from any other writers.

I would however say and most people would agree with me, that EA probably fucked over the Dragon Age franchise. The time table and or the talent working on the project was apparently not enough.

You're not the only one "old timer". But 15 years ago policies didn't mean jack shit because it had no bearing on the product. Who cares if they were "better", they were insignificant.

Which is exactly how I liked it. Because most studios apparently can't handle having any real power without dicking over their customers.

Tell that to a super nintendo player back in the day.

Then Nintendo players should be less stupid and more aware of the world around them?

At what point did I say EA was not a shitty company? Go ahead and find that quote for me, I'm lazy and have 10 minutes before work. If you take a closer read, I'm more or less arguing that while they may not be the best, they don't deserve to be destroyed. I don't wish that on any developer.

Its tacitly implied in the dozen or so times you switched the subject to try to drag other developers down so that EA wouldn't look so bad.

I know as soon as 1 figures it out, the rest will follow. But I'm also sure there are a few who are still incapable of doing that. Having the door unlocked is not the same as leaving the door wide open.

Which is fine, but it's not what they are doing. DRM has been around for a long time and I have literally heard no one ever complain about simple CD copy protection. So that Joe Schmo can't grab a CD burner and make copies for all his friends. But we are talking about EA's DRM usage. Which involves requiring the installation of spyware on your computer that's intense enough to violate German law. Or installing software that throttles your system.

Here's the metaphorical equivalent. If you're a legitimate customer you have to come in the front door where you're beaten with a metal rod and have all your body cavities searched. If you want to break into the house there's a pile of keys to the back door. You can pick one up for free and simply walk in without incident. This is why DRM is a fucking joke. This is why potential customers would rather just break in rather than deal with the shit they have to should they attempt to enter through the front door as it were.

I'm sure you could cruise facebook for awhile and fine plenty of people with no idea wtf a Torrent is.

That's not what Ubisoft says. :crosses arms:

Most of these people view computers as internet machines rather than gaming platforms and pirating console games is slightly more complicated as it requires burning an ISO onto a CD. Also they are irrelevant to talks about piracy because they are not the people that invasive DRM is meant to stop. They are the people stopped by the aforementioned simple copy protection.

Although they are probably about to be very unhappy very soon, because next gen consoles plan on having systems to stop game resale.

Except Valve has Steam to use to peddle it's wares at dirt cheap prices. You're not going to make money if you're selling games for 5 bucks and still trying to stock shelves, you'd lose money for every copy you produced.

Except transferring data over the internet is extremely inexpensive even at higher speeds so losing money selling a 5 bux game is really hard to do when you probably pay about 5c in bandwidth costs. Especially when you compare this to the cost of buying a bunch of CDs, manufacturing a bunch of boxes, and manuals and so on and so forth and then shipping them around the country in giant trucks to each and every one of the tens of thousands of stores that sell videogames. So clearly online sales are the way to go for absolutely anyone publishing any game.

It's not even like it's only a big company like valve that can handle bandwidth for it. I bought penumbra direct from the company and downloaded it online, from them, when it first came out. I also bought a Palestinian-Israeli diplomacy game that I forget the name of, same deal downloaded it right from their website.

And if your argument is that valve is exploiting gaming companies and Indi studios and its they who are shutting down then again... then... what??? Paradox Games has been getting more powerful from selling on steam. Orcs Must Die got its sequel. Indi games flourish on it. Skyrim broke steam online count records. If it was cost inefficient then you would see studios not publish games on it over and over.

So if the newest of new poor and unknown studios can profit greatly off of it, why exactly would the industry explode if everyone did it? That makes no sense whatsoever.

Sounds like a PC gamer problem. Last I checked I could still pop in a console game and the my "biggest issue" is remembering my password.

And all those PC gamer problems are coming to consoles shortly, with none of the benefits that come with PCs. So enjoy that.

Also consoles already have equivalent spyware to track your actions, nobody talks about it much though. Also I'm pretty sure EA's 'install too many times and we will lock you out' still applies to consoles. Consoles never had LAN in the first place so whatever on that front. Online servers still lock consoles out from playing(didn't sega lock people out for awhile?) Quite certain that console CDs also use Securom/Tages ect; so either you didn't notice throttling because consoles tend to run at lower graphical settings, you did notice them on occasion but attributed it to something else, or you have been very lucky. And Bnet 2.0 is Starcraft 2 which is a game consoles don't even get. But who cares you're not missing out it's a very lackluster game.

But rather than stir up the age old console vs PC arguement more than I have already, I'll just go with steam. You're been there from the beginning, I'm sure you can remember when digital distribution was barely coming around, and how fucking terrible it was @ the start.

I didn't use steam at the start. Only really started using it maybe two or three years ago. At the start I installed HL2 from a CD, activated on steam, played the game and then uninstalled and was done with it till recently.

Even you can't deny it's gotten better over time. Sure some things have gotten worse, but that's the trade off. there's nothing wrong with asking for more, but try not to forget the good that you currently have while you're doing it.

1) Technology has gotten better which is irrelevant of the gaming studios, their actions, their policies have gotten worse progressively.
2) The policies they use hurt them more than they help.
3) EA is worse than most in terms of such policies and it's why despite continuously acquiring talented studios with high quality products. They have a tendency to run them into the ground over and over. Which is something even they admitted to 3 or 4 years ago at a point when EA was starting to look like they might become a good company. Unfortunately they have proceeded to do exactly not that. Which is why people really don't like EA.

And it really is their fault with shitty PR, regressive policies that are worse than most other companies both for their customers and for them. That's why defending EA is the unpopular stance.

 

[Necrofudge]

I'd have to disagree. The way I see it, they're evil for the same reason any publicly traded corporation is evil. They only care about making money. Yeah, it's the whole point of the company, but it doesn't excuse it or make it noble just because it's their bottom line.

 

[ResonanceSD]

Westwood Studios: While the last game before they were bought was the 1997 "Blade Runner" game, which was successful

That game is truly the only movie-spinoff in history that was ever good.

I'll just drop this here.

OT: EA are turning a creative medium into a profit driven enterprise. And failing at it. And destroying the medium in the process.

 

[Aeonknight]

Firstly: dude, learn to format quotes.

Really? You sure you wanna open that can of worms after this:

Valve is not the perfect developer people like to think they are.

No dev studio is. But this isn't a competition to determine who's perfect, it's to determine who has the principles that are worst for the industry.

Half Life was good, but honestly the series is close to being forgotten. It's quickly being left behind and the release for HL3 is way past due. Past due to the point where if they were to announce it tomorrow, 0 fucks would be given from me.

Hated TF2. the only redeeming thing about that game was the "Meet the X" videos. Entertaining, but not enough to make me wanna play that game.

Portal was cool. Really short though.

And their other games such as DoD, CS, and L4D are pretty much just mods of half life with a gimmick or 2 added. They're fun sure, but let's not pretend they're some revolutionary games.

I played Counter-Strike GO on release, and was greeted by not only an ungodly lag that reminded me of my 56k days, but a familiar gimmicky playstyle that I had long since abandoned to (imo) superior FPS gameplay delivered by BF3 or even CoD.

Those are games, not principles. Reread the OP. This is a discussion about industry practices; not about what game was the kewlest.

Also: Micro transactions ahoy!

What's wrong with microtransactions that makes them such a bad company? If you want to buy a hat then buy a hat. If you don't care then don't care. From what I understand, they effect the gameplay 0% and only change pixels around. And if that's really your beef, then that's ridiculous. A videogame company does not owe you free hats. And they shouldn't stop making something that other people want, just because you personally don't.

Recently the whole "holding your game library hostage to agree to new ToS" thing does not set a good precedent. EA did it before it was cool, people raged, Valve saw this, and did it anyway. This does not sound like a developer that listens to the consumers and has their interests in mind.

This isn't new at all. You don't own the game even if you have a physical copy. Unless its from like the 80s or very early 90s, most TOSes say that while you own the physical disc, you do not actually own the game but are merely leasing it from the company for a one time payment. This is mainly to protect them legally from your tinkering with and reverse engineering code. But it also means that you are required to agree to any TOS published by the studio, including updated ones viewable from patches, or forfeit your right to use their software. So congrats on your startling attack on every videogame studio for the past 20 years?

An overall lack of innovation, they've made nothing but FPS's and refuse to alter the formula in any way.

And why should they? There are very few original concepts for games, and most of them are garbage. I wouldn't say portal was innovative in that it brought up new ideas, but I would say it was innovative in the 'MacIntosh-Apple' definition of the word. In that it stole someone else's idea and executed it well enough to bring it to the mainstream. There really weren't any big name modern puzzle games until the original portal. Except perhaps penumbra, but that's iffy. I don't think I've ever seen a game like l4d before it came out. I'd say the setup and the execution are very unique both for campaign mode and versus.

The fans. That alone earns them a vote from me just out of spite.

Oh good, because I'm pretty sure the name of this thread is what is the worst publisher based on your childish whims.

Who seriously pledges loyalty to one developer?

I don't know, who does? I certainly haven't ever heard anyone say 'Valve is Lord' and we must all play their games and only their games. I've only heard people defend their legitimate and successful business practices that have thus far favored both developer and customer. That's hardly a profession of loyalty; only an admission that they have policies that people like.

Dude are you talking to me because none of those quotes are mine.

nice one bro. I may be lazy but at least I'm talking to the right guy.

You know what? After that I don't give a damn what the rest of your post says. You'd rather descend into a condescending pissing match than have a legitimate arguement, and since neither of us is changing each other's minds and I'm sure the others are tired of our quote trains, let's just agree to disagree and drop it. You can call this a "win" if you want.

 

[Nieroshai]

My biggest gripe with EA is how they stifle creativity and mandate unrealistic timelines. Look at the last 3 Ultima games; unfinished wrecks that were never playtested, and in the case of 9, so bare-bones that it's painfully obvious half the game is literally missing. Then there's the ME3 ending, scrapped due to... constraints, yet again. Studios that don't die under EA are excellent in their own rights, but still get content dictated to them on a limited budget and schedule. I don't hate EA, I'm just a little mad right now. They can invite their awesome friends on weekends, but EA's still getting the couch indefinitely.

 

[Mycroft Holmes]

Really? You sure you wanna open that can of worms after this:

Yes I do. Because that's the first time I've ever done that in a decade of forum going. I already apologized to him and he's fine with it. And you on the other hand can't seem to make a single post that doesn't have fucked up weird formatting.

nice one bro. I may be lazy but at least I'm talking to the right guy.

It's not even lazy, you're still going to the same effort by bolding your shit. You just have terrible formatting skills.

You know what? After that I don't give a damn what the rest of your post says.

It usually helps to not continue for like three days after the post your quoting saying "after that I'm done." Also that's not even from this thread. Stalker much? Looking for an out because you're losing an argument much?

You'd rather decend into a condescending pissing match than have a legitimate arguement

I'm sorry that you can't set your ego aside and view it objectively.

and since neither of us is changing each other's minds

We'll it would help if you didn't continuously from the beginning go 'I'm not reading this part of your post but I'm responding to what I think it says anyways because there's no way I could be wrong despite the repeated factual errors.' That's ok though, if it doesn't stop Mitt Romney's campaign it shouldn't stop your forum arguing. Don't ever let the facts get in the way of a good story.

and I'm sure the others are tired of our quote trains, let's just agree to disagree and drop it.

If they are or aren't is irrelevant, they are perfectly welcome to stop coming to this thread, or to skip over our posts. Don't concede on their account, you were doing so well.

You can call this a "win" if you want.

I win irrelevant of who has the last words, because your arguments are mostly off topic. And tend to be lies attributing things to EA that EA didn't do. Or making claims that are patently false like 'no one could imagine the internet 20 years ago being used for gaming.' And saying how much better modern day EA is than its chief adversaries from 20 years ago. Boy EA's latest products are just so much better than everything designed for ColecoVision; how do they manage?

 

[shrekfan246]

Dafuq happened in this thread? People still think there's 'win or lose' in internet arguments?

OT: I don't consider EA evil so much as monumentally stupid. Did you know their overall average stock value has dropped by something like $50 USD since Riccitiello took over five years ago? That's about $10 a year. If any company except EA saw drops like that in such a short time, they'd be out of business.

 

[Pearwood]

X

Very well argued. I still say that Steam is the general go-to platform for digital distribution and having a restrictive ToS isn't healthy for developers (and yes I do feel that extends to the console three) but I will concede it isn't a "go to Steam or your game will fail" situation.