Why do people hate EA? - The Bear and Badger

Aaroncupboard

So I found this article whilst avoiding writing children's reports today:

http://uk.ign.com/articles/2012/06/14/why-do-people-hate-ea

It got me thinking because a few years ago I hated EA. They were just producing endless shit. FIFA was shit, Need for Speed got shit and there were countless god-awful tie-in games that sucked immensly.

And then it began to change, suddenly we saw EA producing games like Dead Space, Mass Effect, good Need for Speed games and FIFA began to take over the world. I have completely changed my view of EA and I know look forward to many of their games. They have even started to take risks with games like Bulletstorm.

Yet as the article showed, people still hate them and disagree with many of their choices.

What do you guys think?

The Daddy

Things like this:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/04/09/why-ea-won-the-worst-company-in-america-award/

Little Franklin

Yeah people hate them for a whole new range of reasons, the ME3 ending and on disc DLC, Dragon Age 2, all that Origin crap. I think there's other stuff but I forget what it is. I like them more than I used to though.

Billy

John Riccitello (boss of EA) and the board decided a few years ago to shift focus away from shovelling shit to creating quality IP.Â It's mostly worked, it got us some great titles over the last few years and a lot less licensed rubbish.Â People still hate on them as they such a large target.

having said that they have still closed studios and made huge swathes of redundancies, which is enough to hate any company.

They recently closed Bright Light in Guildford after the Harry Potter license ran out laying off 100 or so people (that's an estimate) while at the same time they are opening a studio in Gothenburg, Sweden to make games with Frostbite.Â It's as if it's cheaper/better to close one entire studio laying off everyone and open a new one from scratch, rather than retrain existing staff with new tools.

Webbins

The change of focus was welcome but again I think complacency is setting in. Look at what they are doing to the Battlefield franchise, it's becoming less about the game and more about what money the genre can generate when made to ape another franchise or another publisher's business model.

I'm looking forward to Most Wanted, but fear it will go the way of Hot Pursuit. A much trumpeted release, a few months of healthy multiplayer and then some cynical DLC ploy, farcical patching and then empty lobbies until we repeat again with Hot Pursuit II.

EA, as with many publishers, need to return to putting games first, it is all too often about the financial returns. Good games will bring their own rewards, as I believe is the intentions of DICE and Criterion, but their overlords are putting too much pressure on the money aspect to see this clearly.

Frosty

Yeah I really felt EA turned their image around a few years ago and were creating a lot of great games but the last couple of years the rot has set in again.

I blame big Peter.

[Deleted User]

that tat is out of date!

mistercrayon

The problem is that people want niche games and unproven up to the standard of triple A except not in enough quantities to justify the AAA dev cost. People complain when they churn out money spinners but forget that this is what funds your dead spaces mirrors edge and the like.

I_R

Part of the problem is that the renaissance period where everyone was applauding EA for beingÂ moreÂ creative and trying to create more variety saw them losing money. We're paying for that now as they try and squeeze money out of their successful titles.

Brooks

The only solution is to ban money.

Little Franklin

Don't be silly Brooks that's rather a drastic plan. Just give all the money to me and I'll decide how it's spent.

Dark Soldier

I like you lil' frank but you always strike me as someone who rocks a cystic hygroma

ChattinWithChet

The Daddy wrote:

Things like this: http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/04/09/why-ea-won-the-worst-company-in-america-award/

That they were named the worst company, over The Bank of America shows what a fucking joke the people who voted for EA are. A piddling, whining semi-flaccid internet crowd and not much more.

Brooks

Ban also all the nerds.

Brooks

Actually fuck it, that's not even who I mean - proper nerds are amazing.

Ban all the gamers.

ChattinWithChet

It's what happens when you give the cast of King of Kong power.

Mod74

Surely it's not a lot to ask to be able to buy a game, and play it, without it being an endless cycle of updates that break more things then they fix and relentless advertisements to buy buy BUY some extra bits for said pile of shit.

ChattinWithChet

It's a lot to suggest it's a more serious problem than people losing their homes.

Mod74

I somehow doubt that's something most of the people who voted in that thing worry about.

ChattinWithChet

Mod74 wrote:

I somehow doubt that's something most of the people who voted in that thing worry about.

That's the problem.

I_R

ChattinWithChet wrote:

Mod74 wrote:

I somehow doubt that's something most of the people who voted in that thing worry about.

That's the problem.

It's a consumer survey though, wanting loads of internet kids who've had very limited dealings with banks to fabricate some displeasure seems a little odd. Taking that reasoning to it's logical conclusion, we shouldn't have video games at all, because there's bad stuff happening in the world.

Little Franklin

Is EA more hated than Activision? They're the big evil behemoths but it seems like they're better at making good if unoriginal games, this Diablo thing will have lost them plenty of points though.

Dark Soldier wrote:

I like you lil' frank but you always strike me as someone who rocks a cystic hygroma

Why's that?
Studied the Wiki page on that for a while before deciding I had no clue what you were talking about.

ChattinWithChet

I_R wrote:

It's a consumer survey though, wanting loads of internet kids who've had very limited dealings with banks to fabricate some displeasure seems a little odd. Taking that reasoning to it's logical conclusion, we shouldn't have video games at all, because there's bad stuff happening in the world.

Not about fabricating displeasure, it's about being aware of reality and that paying for DLC that you don't have to pay for, might be actually be less of a bother than folks ending up homeless. Pointing to EA winning the Worst Company in ... means dick all when it is pushed along by people who are so credulous to consider that such inconveniences deserve such a title. Seeing as this was driven largely by internet groups, I find it very hard to believe that there was an unawareness of the issues here.

ChattinWithChet

And if it could just be considered the product of X many people being directly dissatisfied with EA, then it really shows how disconnected from reality these kinds of surveys are, and quantity of displeasure is not exactly an adequate measure of good business practices.

I_R

ChattinWithChet wrote:

Seeing as this was driven largely by internet groups,

Source for this?

I wouldn't describe people Â being evicted from their homes as poor customer service and that's what I'd take the survey to be an indication of. It's from The Consumerist, not The Washington Post. What it says is that EA deliver some pretty poor service to their customers, bringing up the tangled recent history of the USÂ mortgageÂ market is whataboutery of the worst kind.

ChattinWithChet

I_R wrote:

Source for this?

Their reputation has been shaped quite severely by bods who sit on interweb message boards and some great crossover with the 4-Chan / Anonymous crowd. Perhaps folks were individually annoyed that they bought DLC that they didn't want to buy in sufficient numbers to beat out Bank Of America, who have a looooong history of fucking their customers - due to incompetence, duplicity, greed etc. - with far more severe consequences. If that is the case, then it is an even greater reason to shit on this survey and the people who hold it up as evidence of anything but what a generation gets wet over.

I wouldn't describe people Â being evicted from their homes as poor customer service and that's what I'd take the survey to be an indication of. It's from The Consumerist, not The Washington Post. What it says is that EA deliver some pretty poor service to their customers, bringing up the tangled recent history of the USÂ mortgageÂ market is whataboutery of the worst kind.

It really fucking isn't, and I don't know in what world actions like this:

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/bank-america-florida-foreclosed-angry-homeowner-bofa/story?id=13775638

Could be considered anything but bad fucking customer service. If this survey has anything at all to with the objective state of EA and Bank of America - or the many other sorts who were running - as companies, then this is a ridiculous result of a whole heap of weird, entitled, whiny sorts who seemingly have no greater problems in their life than paid for DLC on the disc.

I_R

Can you give me an example of a company you've had bad customer service from?

ChattinWithChet

The question was:

Which company is the absolute worst in America?

The reasoning was:

"After more than 250,000 votes, Consumerist readers ultimately decided that the type of greed exhibited by EA, which is supposed to be making the world a more fun place, is worse than Bank of America's avarice, which some would argue is the entire point of operating a bank."

I_R

I'll concede that the survey is dumb, but I still don't see that you can expect consumers to have a strong opinion of a company they've never dealt with.

Elmlea

Exactly! Â So I'm not allowed to be annoyed with EA, because day-1 paid-for DLC won't lose me my home?

I can't find numbers of how many people have lost their homes due to Bank of American doing something dodgy, but EA's particularly schoolyard levels of greed affect 95.85 million Wii owners, 67.2 million Xbox 360 owners and 63.9 million PS3 owners.

So sure, losing my home would be worse than having some money forced out of me for part of a game I shouldn't have to pay for, but on the other hand I'm not at risk of the former but do suffer the latter.

I bank with BofA and haven't found any problems with them at all.

Frosty

You just like those drive through ATMs.

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