Why EA? Just why?

[Vanbael]

Ok, I'm kind of getting a little bit frustrated with "Fuck EA" and "Origin Sucks" and not to mention that you have the whole "Company A is now apart of EA, their games will now suck to the nth degree".

I don't know why, but I don't see anything wrong with them. Yeah they had made mistakes but the thing is that they can afford to. The question is WHY!? Fuck, even the never ending rage about the ME3 ending got them voted "Worst Company" which is just about the stupidest thing I've ever seen this decade. Way to go gaming community, you know how to kick them under the bus quickly.

And just why and where the fuck do you guys get all this hate? Why do you think that the companies that become a part of EA end up sucking when I see good games turned out.

I'm looking for a good explanation why, add some analysis, and not some stupid fucking answer that amounts to "just because they are EA."

I want good answers, and I want to get to the bottom of this.

 

[Emiscary]

EA's not your girlfriend. Why do you care if she's being picked on?

 

[Aircross]

"Developer wants to make a game. Developer needs money and resources. Developer the gives rights to its idea to a bigger company in exchange for money and publishing. EA then buys the developer, ruins it, and we get no more Dungeon Keeper." - Jim Sterling

Dungeon Keeper's developer is not the only developer EA has ruined or is ruining at this moment.

I'm trying to figure out how many developers they're currently in the process of all but destroying.

Origin - Known for both the Wing Commander and Ultima series
EA Black Box(Formerly Black Box games) - Some Skate and Need for Speed games. This is very recent
Bullfrog - This is where Dungeon Keeper came from. They also unleashed Peter Molyneaux because of this.
Kesmai - Pretty much nothing anyone will remember, because they were owned and basically buried by AOL, then sold to EA, then closed off.
Pandemic - Destroy All Humans, Mercenaries, and a few other titles.


I'm sure with enough digging, we could probably find about 100 or so basically dead IPs for EA, and as many, if not more for Activision.

 

[Fappy]

Pretty much what everyone else has said. EA is the Phage of the industry.

 

[Iwata]

EA's not your girlfriend. Why do you care if she's being picked on?

I will adress this.

EA is indeed not "my girlfriend", but it does seem like people have lost objectivity. EA is a publisher, and a powerful one at that. Without EA, many of the games we play would simply not exist, at all, period. I started playing EA games back in the days of the Mega Drive, and I still fondly remember their logo as a symbol of quality. And back then, if, say, "Road Rash" didn't have enough tracks or if it ended too soon, we would not go on a hypocritical "crusade" against the company, cynicaly denouncing it while playing their games. I'd be happy knowing I enjoyed the majority of the game, because no game is perfect.

The issue of entitlement has been thrown around a lot, and most gamers defend the rights of their community without pausing to think things through. as if the whole debacle with ME3 wasn't enough, this thing with Dark Souls is simply ridicullous: "We demand Dark Souls on the PC!"

Lo and behold, they give you "Dark Souls" on the PC, even though making games for the PC these days is pretty much just asking for trouble.

But wait... it's GFWL...

"We demand the game come out on Steam!"

What next? Are we to start setting prices as well? Level designs? I trust professionals to make the games I play, and I've found that the more some communities get involved, the more things fall apart from the game's original vision.

I'm not saying EA are angels. But I cannot join this mass movement against a company whose games I enjoy. And if they release a product I don't like, then I simply! Don't! Buy it!

Feel free to rant away now.

 

[Rawne1980]

I'm sure a multi billion pound company appreciates you defending them.

But, just for giggles.

-Bots used in a petition.
-Writing their own reviews on user review sites.
-Origin doesn't "suck" it is poorly. It has more ailments than a mongolian field hospital .... with an outbreak of polio.
-When things go wrong, they blame the gamers.
-They lay people off when games don't perform "as expected" (well if they expected TOR to pull in multi million subs then they need to sack whoever they have pretending to think over there).
-Milking it's fans. They are but flowing money rivers heading to the sea of EA.
-Banning users from ALL games when they get a ban from one (or the forums). They finally sorted this out but it was a shit practice to start with.

The worst company had nothing to do with ME3. EA is known for bad practices.

But you are right, let us praise them. Because they really need defending while they wipe their collective arses on £20 notes.

Not saying EA are the only ones guilty of a lot of the above but at least Activision managed to (eventually) shut Kotick the fuck up.

 

[ThriKreen]

There was a story I read once online somewhere about what Origin Systems did when EA bought them. I can't find the article anymore though (still trying to dig it up!), but it was a real eye opener in that (if true) not all the blame was EA. In fact, EA was pretty hands off in the beginning, basically "Here's funding, go make awesome games" but they kinda went wild with said funding and did things such as doubling the number of employees from 200 to 400 in the span of a year, but without increasing the number of projects and such, so was basically burning money (payroll is always the most expensive). Add that some of the creatives types left, whether cashing out or chafing under EA management, and you end up with a lot of inexperienced newbies handling the hot titles Origin was known for. Hence the decline in quality. So not all of it was EA's fault really, and the closing was to cut their losses.

To be fair, after that stuff happened, I believe EA management got more hands on for their next studio purchases. Which is understandable as they want to protect their investments. But it resulted in a downward spiral of suits meddling and people chafing and thus leaving.

But nowadays, people only see the "Origin/Bullfrog/etc. used to make good games, then EA bought them and now they suck! Therefore EA sucks and has the reverse Midas Touch!" without understanding the underlying reason for the studio change or closure.

Hence today's witch hunt attitude.

 

[dimensional]

well others have already said what I was going to say so I will just reiterate the jist of it EA are poison they destroy everything they touch sometimes it a slow and insidious poison other times its a fast acting one.

Then they tie up the dead corpse of the company and start pulling its strings so it moves and looks like a facsimile of what it once was but is now completely without heart and soul totally under EAs sway, then when finally the corpse stinks too much they throw it away and do it again getting fat on their victims belongings.

Thats why I hate EA anyway I have no good memories of EA they have been on my bad side for as long as I can remember its not even a case of they were cool in the past (although maybe they were at some distant point) now they are shit which makes them unique in the gaming world for me I honestly cant think of another publisher I have hated for as long as I have been gaming.

Its all perception of course but all feelings work that way its just a lot of people perceive EA as not a good thing so maybe there is something to it.

 

[Vanbael]

I'm sure a multi billion pound company appreciates you defending them.

But, just for giggles.

-Bots used in a petition.
-Writing their own reviews on user review sites.
-Origin doesn't "suck" it is poorly. It has more ailments than a mongolian field hospital .... with an outbreak of polio.
-When things go wrong, they blame the gamers.
-They lay people off when games don't perform "as expected" (well if they expected TOR to pull in multi million subs then they need to sack whoever they have pretending to think over there).
-Milking it's fans. They are but flowing money rivers heading to the sea of EA.
-Banning users from ALL games when they get a ban from one (or the forums). They finally sorted this out but it was a shit practice to start with.

The worst company had nothing to do with ME3. EA is known for bad practices.

But you are right, let us praise them. Because they really need defending while they wipe their collective arses on £20 notes.

Not saying EA are the only ones guilty of a lot of the above but at least Activision managed to (eventually) shut Kotick the fuck up.

First of all, I'm not defending them. I'm asking questions. You need to forgive the tone of the initial post.

But what I saw there, the bad practices part. That's what I think I was looking for. The thing is that I think they can carelessly afford to make the terrible decisions because they have money. But they can be smarter with that, but knowing that money leads to greed, I'm sure they can invest more time into their practices.

 

[ThriKreen]

-Bots used in a petition.

Any proof of this? Which petition, the LGBT support one? While there's no doubt some sort of spam bot is being used, no one has been able to tie it to EA at all.

-Writing their own reviews on user review sites.

A small handful of devs writing a personal review of a game they worked on is more of their own opinion of the game, less so on astro-turfing as you claim.

-Milking it's fans. They are but flowing money rivers heading to the sea of EA.

Sure, yearly sports game release is equal to Activision's $15 for a 4 map pack for a COD:MW game.

 

[Iwata]

You might also be surprised to know that maybe some of a lot of people's favorite games come from the entitled minds of some of those communities, if you take Valve for instance: Counter Strike, Team Fortress 2, Left4Dead, DOTA 2, Day of Defeat etc. are all products of Mod-Makers. Where exactly do you think those "professionals" come from? Do you think they are born "professional"?

Ah yes, Valve, beloved by all...

I have my own issues with EA, but as bad as they may be, they never stole my games by randomly shutting down my account, taking with it several hundred ??? of games I legitimately bought.

Valve, however, did.

So yeah, personaly, Valve, the miracle company of gaming, has been far worse to me than EA has ever been.

Also, I must confess I don't understand your comment on Dark Souls and "butthurt". If you're implying some sort of inter-platform rivalry, I assure you you're wrong. The way I see it, the more people play games, the better.

 

[Hazy992]

Because they're a bunch of insidious bastards who make one dickish business decision after another. I know other publishers do this but they come off as the worst to me.

 

[DoPo]

I don't think anybody mentioned EA's marketing strategies. There was a lot of outcry after the Dead Space 2 one, then there was also Dante's Inferno. And most recently the Mass Effect 3- "The ending stirred more reaction from gamers than any other game in history" or whatever that line was. But that's just filling to the other reasons mentioned above.

 

[Rawne1980]

First of all, I'm not defending them. I'm asking questions. You need to forgive the tone of the initial post.

But what I saw there, the bad practices part. That's what I think I was looking for. The thing is that I think they can carelessly afford to make the terrible decisions because they have money. But they can be smarter with that, but knowing that money leads to greed, I'm sure they can invest more time into their practices.

A lot of it is down to their (bad) PR team.

Quite a lot of gamers would have been happy had EA said, at least once, "look guys, we screwed up ... sorry".

But they turn around and lay the blame squarely at the fans feet. "You dislike the ME3 ending, well you are an entitled homophobe" (obviously not the exact wording but you get the point).

Making (or producing in EA's case) good games is not enough to prevent any backlash.

Years ago we never gave a shit. Altered Beast wasn't that great of a game I thought, so I stopped playing it. Games were a one off purchase, no DLC and no bollocks.

Now, games feel like a constant investment. You have the initial "deposit" and then fork out for DLC, addons, expansions and whatever else have you.

With that much money flowing then people are going to complain if something pisses them off. I didn't register my dismay at the ending to ME3 besides a few snide comments on this forum. I did what i've done with every other game I haven't enjoyed ... I lied through my bollocks to get a refund (you'd be surprised how many times the "I bought it as a gift but they already have it" has worked). And that is the reason I never use digital downloads, nor will ever, but thats a tale for another rainy day.

The biggest problem is, companies like Acti, EA and Ubisoft have gotten away with so much shit with relatively minor backlash that what has happened recently is like the straw that broke the camels back. It's one step too far for a lot of people.

Personally I think it's great. For a short while the sound of "stop selling us mediocre games" could be heard. It won't last and round the next bend we'll have Sims 300 and Battlefield 632.

The other problem is people think that gamers are fans of developers. A lot of us aren't. We are fans of the games not the devs themselves. Allow me to elaborate....

I'll take Dungeon Keeper.

I was, and still am, a big fan of Dungeon Keeper. I loved Dungeon Keeper 2. Was I said when Bullfrog vanished .... no. There are other devs and a rising indie market.

In short, I don't buy games to support a developer I buy them for MY enjoyment. I buy used games because they are cheap. If I can't find a game used i'll keep an eye on Amazon until I see it a bargain bucket prices.

I game for my benefit, no one else's.

Selfish? I don't care. It's my money i'll do what I damn well want with it.

 

[Limecake]

I have no problem with EA, Activision is head and shoulders more ruthless that EA and that's why they are so much richer. Some people might need to take a step back for a second and realize that EA is simply a business, they are always going to do what's best for business because when you're running a multi-million dollar company the bottom line is the only thing you're focused on.

And from that graph that was linked:

EAs stockholders should stop feeling so entitled xD

you can see that EA isn't exactly raking in cash hand over fist, remember that the company below EA on this chart is currently rumored to be going out of business.

Do you really think EA shouldn't let people go? do you think they should charge less for DLC or online passes? think they should stop releasing yearly sports games?

I like EA and I like Bioware. I also like their games which is why I understand that EA has to do some of the things they do to keep their company going. Nothing is forcing you to buy their products if you don't want to, but I would be personally sad to see EA go under after the many years of quality gaming they have given me.

 

[boag]

Without EA, many of the games we play would simply not exist, at all, period.

Pray tell, when has this ever been a good reason to keep anything around?

Do you frankly believe that just because EA didnt exist there wouldnt be games to fill in their spots?

Do you honestly believe that Without EA Gaming would be worse off?

If you do I would love for you to provide more backbone to your statement than "Because I say so" or "look at these games" because EA has yet to actually make a game from their own core not subsidized from another company, that has actually pushed gaming innovation forward.

If you can name just one, ill back off and accept you claim as valid.