The hate on EA, justified?

[MR T3D]

i think they're pretty good, fan of BF and NFS up to underground 2, more recent DRM policies are tolerable, pretty nice ship, wish them good profits now and in the future

Spoiler: Minor Derail: on topic of pandemic games

on the subject of Pandemic games and its closing:
they had made nothing on this generation that was very good, or really, any sequel that was worthy of its predecessor as far as i'm concerned.
battlefront2: yeah, space is in, but many maps were ugly in comparison to 1/not as good, the tank nerf,
(bespin platforms FTW)
Mercenaries: 1st game is still my favourite, followed the sequel's development with excitement, delays were unfortunate, but ultimately once released it was a major disappointment compared to relatively reasonable expectations.
DAH!: again, 1st game IS STILL sweet, but the sequels felt too crude and not enough improvement, splitscreen in 2 was almost awesome.

really, they almost deserved going under

 

[carpathic]

Honestly - justified. The DRM that really only punishes paying customers..yeah, always smart to spit in the face of the people who pay your salary.

 

[Withard]

There was a huge interview in some PC magazine i read. Cant recall as it was a few years back about them treating their employees like utter trash. As in making deadlines so impractical people ended up doing nearly 20 hour days and sleeping in the office so they would get it ready. Think its been looked into alot now tho.

 

[joshthor]

activision is much worse than ea. seriously... there is like 11 guitar hero games all with dlc's and all require one or more guitars. they have 2 different studios milking the call of duty franchise, their ceo is one of the evilest men in the gaming industry. meanwhile, even though ea does ship off new sports games every year (why that is a complaint is beyond me) they send out almost all of the best games i have ever played

 

[joshthor]

same

activision is much worse than ea. seriously... there is like 11 guitar hero games all with dlc's and all require one or more guitars. they have 2 different studios milking the call of duty franchise, their ceo is one of the evilest men in the gaming industry. meanwhile, even though ea does ship off new sports games every year (why that is a complaint is beyond me) they send out almost all of the best games i have ever played

Activision doesn't develop them...just produce them.

same with ea.

 

[Littlee300]

Activision are by far the new EA. The Requirement of Battle.net for even LAN play in Starcraft 2 shows that, despite what anyone says, Blizzard cannot do what they like, and that Kotick has some control, he just gives them a loose leash.
.

What so bad about battle.net just takes 2 seconds to login.

 

[DustyDrB]

I've not heard the hate.

 

[Mehall]

Activision are by far the new EA. The Requirement of Battle.net for even LAN play in Starcraft 2 shows that, despite what anyone says, Blizzard cannot do what they like, and that Kotick has some control, he just gives them a loose leash.
.

What so bad about battle.net just takes 2 seconds to login.

My net connection is often patchy at best, which is why I often don't get around to playing online games. (Sometimes it's fine, sometimes I get rubberbanded all across the place)

Also: latency should NOT be a problem when you are playing a LAN game, but everythng will go through the b.NET servers. At least Steam has an offline mode, and doesn't impact upon you playing games in LAN mode.

 

[MMMowman]

EA are up themselves so yes

/thread

 

[TheTim]

They shut down Pandemic Studios... they should be hung

 

[Flying Dagger]

Releasing the same game, year after year, as they do with every sport, is pretty out of order.
And only produce games based on sequel prospects, if Stolen Pixels is to be believed.

 

[Poofs]

ea's hate has diminished recenttly with the release of some good games
all the sports titles really piss me off though

NHL 2010 really?

 

[Ice-Raccoon]

I hate EA's role in promoting DRM and I despise them for having destroyed many of my favorite developers throughout the years by gobbling them up, removing their liberties and ultimately disbanding them when they stop being the cash-cow they once were.

I get the fact that it's a business and as such it's interested in making money, but what happened to placing entertainment first?

Some people seem to hate EA because they release a lot of sport games, year after year it's the same game with minor improvements and a different roster of players. I don't get this hatred at all. Sports games are just like that, being modeled on the sports that they are.

But as indicated above, I despise their grim stranglehold on game publishing. I actively try not to buy EA games anymore. I know I'm missing out on a lot of quality games here, but it's a price I think is worth paying.

 

[xyrafhoan]

EA gave me a digital arts scholarship and a tour of their Sports division, and I won a raffle for a Wii + 6 games. All the games they gave me for free sucked and I traded them in for store credit, but they're actually pretty generous towards artists and offer a lot of job opportunity to animation students where I live.

 

[Gladion]

Everyone saying "it's mostly because of DRM" is wrong, because that hate was established long before that.
It's mostly because they make money. Their games are not bad, they aren't lacking innovation as much as people try to make you believe (with the exception of Medal of Honor), it's just that they make so many series. Which doesn't mean their games suck, they constantly evolve, see Need for Speed or FIFA or something. I don't buy their games and I still get that, the improvements they make are not minor just because they haven't changed the title.

Yes, they make a billion sequels, but whats the difference between a new game and a new game with a familiar title?

EA is also the company having developed most original IPs this gen, so stfu, keep your hate towards EA for yourself.

Edit: About Pandemic: meh. It'd be the same if Microsoft closed down Rare. They don't release anything good anyways any more, so I see no reason why to keep them intact. Just because of their reputation? Meh, again.

 

[Arbitrary Cidin]

EA is one of the only opposing forces to creative minds being shorted out on budget and never passing through the indie phase. They work their branches hard and remove them in 5 years, but that's going to give the a shiny new badge on their resume that'll make more jobs open to them. Why do you think a lot of EA games turn out poor? They're an indie mill with a big bank. They do have more experienced developers, but for the most part they just work guys to the bone and restock. It sounds bad, but the devs knew what they were getting into and usually are satisfied with what they walk away with

 

[Guitarmasterx7]

Well, they did acquire Bioware. And I've played DA:O and can attest to its mediocrity.
I've never played KOTOR but the Bioware fanboys LOVE IT, so I can only guess that EA forced Bioware into mediocrity?

If you didn't like Dragon Age you probably wouldn't like KOTOR either (assuming you didn't like dragon age because of the combat). Mass Effect 2 was good though so I don't think that's the case.

OT: Up until recently EA just constantly released a stream of meh games. Though now they seem to be buying out existing game companies and not fucking up franchises, so I don't really have any feelings towards them.