Why does Activision/Call of Duty get all the hate, yet EA doesn't?

[Ironbat92]

I've been thinking about this for a while, and I still wounder why. EA hires people to act like Religious extremist to boycott Dante's Inferno, Medal of Honor's censorship, Dead Space 2 commercial(we should be luck that Fox New is stupid and attacked Bulletstorm instead, or we would fucked), the whole "Battlefield 3's gonna take down Modern Warfare 3" statement they made at E3 after Activison said they wanted to have, and don't get me started on that Battlefield commercial slogan. Why does EA keep doing this and get away with this? But does activision get hate? Yes, there was the whole "2010 employee firings and departures", but that's just one thing they've done wrong, and yet EA has so much more. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy a lot of the games they publish, like Mass Effect and Bulletstorm, Those little "Marketing acts" and the statements just prove that they're acting like a bunch of 13 year old boys with the mindset of a 7 year old. What do you guys think.

 

[Armored Prayer]

EA used to be the most hated years back, but while they do some pretty stupid things as of late their games overall are actually in good quality.

At least thats how I think of them. They do dumb crap, but some of those games are really grea so I let it slide.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

Here in my little bubble of ignorance, I had always thought that EA was the most hated, not activision or Call of Duty. I like my little bubble (and constantly forget about Activision making Call of Duty...)

 

[Griffolion]

I'd say EA get's more vitriol than Activision slung it's way most of the time.

Particularly regarding Battlefield 3 and MW3, I genuinely do feel sorry for DICE and BF3, as it's EA making those statements, not them. DICE did say that competitors were "treading water" in the genre, but that's as far as the "trash talk" went with them.

But back to the topic at large, any massive publisher/company that becomes successful is usually hated. I think it's a natural human reaction to treat with contempt that which has more money than you. (Sarcasm, chill out).

 

[Irridium]

Where the hell are you looking?

I see EA hate everywhere. Half the time it's coming from me.

And to add to it, they're now putting an online pass on ME3's co-op. Even after they learned that the revenue from online passes are negligible at best. Oh well, I don't care. There's nothing about Mass Effect multiplayer that gets me excited in any way.

I'd chalk it up to another thing EA did, but recently the Bioware heads said that EA doesn't tell them what to do. Which means Bioware wanted to do this. Either way, it's not needed to get the best ending in the main game, so I'll just let it sit there, ignored.

 

[Jakub324]

The only thing I have against Activision is the £10 map pack dick move. Still, EA's addiction to online passes is a thousand times worse.

 

[Wayneguard]

Dude where have you been? Origin? Dragon Age 2? EA sports? (ok that last one is just my hate). EA gets plenty of hate.

 

[ShadowsofHope]

You obviously haven't seen most threads railing on Dragon Age 2, Origins, Mass Effect 2/3 hysteria threads, etc (not that the listed examples don't have genuine points to bring up, just listing instances where EA does get a lot of hate).

 

[Vivi22]

Activision has seemed to be pretty careful to keep their head down since the whole Infinity Ward debacle and shutting down Guitar Hero after they ran it into the ground. Meanwhile EA seems to be making one stupid decision after another in the last 2 years or so.

Which is funny because for a while there EA seemed to be making all of the right moves to shed their previous asshole image people had of them and actually turn into a decent publisher. So yeah, I definitely see a lot more hate being leveled at EA lately, and I can't say that most of it is unjustified.

 

[Ordinaryundone]

I like EA. Their Marketing department actually has some balls; it reminds me of a time when game companies could get away with flinging insults at each other. In fact, it was expected (SEGA does what Nintendon't). And I personally thought the Dead Space 2 marketing campaign was hilarious. The only one that really made me raise an eyebrow was the Dante's Inferno campaign, but only because they went a bit far. Sacrificing a goat? Really? I appreciate thinking outside of the box, but thats going a little overboard.

 

[Mid-Boss]

Are you kidding? EA is like Walmart. The quintessential example of customer fucking but I fear that all other companies will follow their business model because it makes crap loads of money.

They herald the way seeing how far they can push the public, which is pretty damn far because no one believes in or cares about anything anymore. They'll sit around whining. But suggest that they DON'T give their money to these companies and they scoff at you like hipsters. Sorry but a single dollar means more to these companies than a thousand whining forum posts. That's why, not matter how good their games are, EA wont get any of my money.

 

[Smooth Operator]

I would presume the general customer treatment is the main issue, Activision was the king of that sewage dump for a while but EA is fighting real hard to take it over.

 

[Racecarlock]

You haven't been here long have you? Don't worry, you'll see lots of EA hate soon enough. I choose to ignore them, but that's because I can actually search for freeware and flash games, and I also watch DBZ abridged. So stick around for about a week and you'll find some hate soon enough.

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

EA gets hate. They just get hate for doing what most corporations do.

Activision gets hate due to milking franchises dry constantly.

 

[NinjaDeathSlap]

What planet have you been living on where EA gets no hate. CoD gets a lot of hate granted but that's just one franchise for Activision. EA gets hate for just about every single thing it does.

 

[chadachada123]

The thing about EA is that they've been doing their crap for a REALLY long time, whereas it has taken Activision a bit longer to get into the consumer-boning business.

Look at the Tony Hawk games. Those were awesome...up until Underground. After that it went to shit. Activision doesn't have many other games to screw over like that aside from CoD, which is a more-recent development anyway. Since CoD4 was so great and innovative, people laid off of them until MW2, when it became clear that they're just recycling the same stuff.

EA, however, takes such an idiotic extreme, and has for such a long time, that everyone hates them but will still dip into their games once in awhile because the games themselves are, occassionally, quite awesome, just beaten to death. Need for Speed, any sport-related game, Medal of Honor, The Sims, etc etc.

With Rock Band, EA isn't screwing up nearly as hard as Activision is with Guitar Hero, and thus you hear little on this front.

Concerning DRM, EA is WAYYYY beyond Activision, but only PC gamers and the used market is really going to speak out, and on a much smaller front. Back when I frequented the GamePolitics forums, EA was hated more than any other company, period. Their DRM in Spore and other games was inexcusable, and they were blasted much more than Activision, even when the Activision-Infinity Ward stuff was happening.

It really depends on where you look and who the gaming media decides is the enemy. What we should know, though, is this: EA and Activision are both enemies, both restricting the developers and actively fucking the consumers, without any care for how good a game actually is.

 

[RobCoxxy]

EA are still shit but so is Activision and MW3.