Electronic Arts Wants To Be Voted Best Company In America

[Andy Chalk]

Electronic Arts Wants To Be Voted Best Company In America

Patrick Soderlund of Electronic Arts says being voted "Worst Company in America" two years in a row forced it to step back and reconsider what it was doing.

Electronic Arts set a new high in lows earlier this year when it was overwhelmingly chosen as the worst company in America [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/123161-Electronic-Arts-Repeats-as-Worst-Company-in-America] in a Consumerist poll, the first, and so far only, time that a company has repeated as the "winner." It's obviously a silly distinction and more a reflection of the pool of respondents than of any particular evil committed by EA, but Soderlund, the executive vice president of EA Studios, said it stung nonetheless.

"I don't believe for a second that we are the worst company in America, but I do believe when something like that happens, you have to sit down and ask yourselves, 'Why are people saying these things?'," he told MCV. "We did that and we started to realize that we are doing things that people don't like."

"We looked at something as simple as the Online Pass," he continued. "People were telling us they didn't like that. So we weighed up the pros and cons and went, 'Okay. We will remove it.' These decisions need to be driven by what consumers want and tell us, and that is where we may have faltered a bit in the past."

Soderlund said it's inevitable that EA will make mistakes but suggested that the plan going forward will be a simple one: acknowledge that a mistake was made, and then fix it. That's easy to say and doesn't mean much without action to back it up, but the long-term goal is to "earn people's trust and respect."

"We don't want to be bad, we have no desire to be voted the worst company in America," Soderlund said. "On the contrary, we want to be voted the best."

Source: MCV [http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/ea-we-want-to-be-voted-the-best-company-in-america/0125002]


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[Reed Spacer]

But you are the best, EA.

The best at being worst.

 

[Erttheking]

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH! AHAHAHAHAHA- OH DEAR LORD!

EA, it's good to know that you've got goals in mind, but you've got a LOT of time to make up for and a lot of people you pissed off to win back over. You've spent years digging yourself this pit. It's gonna take years to get out of it.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

You tried to be 'the best company in America' back in 2007 and we all know how that turned out.

Face it EA, you're a soulless bureaucratic nightmare devoted to making money whose schemes range from 'incompetent' to 'what the fuck were they thinking.'

I think aiming a little lower would be more realistic, like beating Activision and Ubisoft.

 

[Bindal]

Well, good luck. To be voted that, you would need to do a 180 in almost everything you do. Probably the ONLY thing you don't need to change is how you work with the Sims...

 

[tippy2k2]

I know it pains many to say it but they're doing a lot better (though they still have a lot more they can do).

-A lot less milking of franchises.
To just cherry pick the first thing off the top of my head:
Dragon Age to Dragon Age 2; 1.5 years between releases; DA2 to DA3 2.5 years assuming no delays

-Removal of the Online Pass

-As much flack as they get, FIFA and Madden have made HUGE improvements compared to earlier editions (especially Madden, which just stalled out after EA got the NFL exclusive rights)

-Instead of sticking with NCAA and their systematic exploitation of college athletes, EA stepped out. I suppose that could be more PR then because it's the right thing to do but a good deed is a good deed.

-I am not a PC gamer but I've heard that Origin has become much better compared to what it used to be. Still nowhere near Steam (again, just going off of what I've heard) but it's getting better

Still a lot more they can do ("Broader Audience" seems to get thrown around by them a lot, giving us watered down giants rather than smaller niche titles) but I think Ubisoft has stepped in to overtake EA as the worst game company.

 

[Weresquirrel]

Baby steps EA, maybe rather than going straight for Best Company, you should focus on something more realistic... Like... Uh... "Company most likely to be called EA"? You could probably pull that off

 

[VoidOfOne]

Don't want to be voted the worst again?

GET RID OF ORIGIN! Or at least make it so that I don't have to be online to play single-player games!

Get rid of the DLC checker BS that prevents me from playing any Mass Effect saves offline because they have DLC on it! That was total BS! Didn't even realize it until I got the whole series downloaded.

And give me Jade Empire 2! Or some spiritual successor, dammit!

 

[Floppertje]

Yeah, that's likely to happen. If you're wondering how you can be voted best company, you've already lost the competition.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

So EA, you want to be the best company in America?

Well in order to achieve that you need to put your customer's needs over your desire for increasing profit margins.

You have to create a top quality product that people desire and can depend on to deliver, and when it doesn't, give full apologies and compensation.

You need to readdress your budgeting to get the most out of your companies earnings by creating an efficient workforce, not subsidising a top-heavy corporate structure by nickel and diming your customers.

You must provide a value for money service that customers are happy to purchase. You must not include shady or unpopular systems in your products that your customers vocally dislike (microtransactions, cut content being sold seperately as DLC, Always Online etc.)

That is what you must do if you truely want to be seen as the best company in America. It will cost you money. It will cost you shareholder confidence and reduce your profit margins. It will make your company more honest, more popular and better regarded.

Do you wish to continue?

 

[cerebus23]

They would need to go out of business.

With 50 and 60 dollars season passes, 50 dollar dlc in xbone launch games, this gen is shaping up to be how much can we bleed them for with dlc, something you helped pioneer EA.

I think hell with either freeze over or the world will end before EA will ever be voted best company, they should strive for maybe most improved before we go extinct.

 

[CrazyGirl17]

...Yeah, no. Maybe there are worse companies out there... but EA is far from the best.

 

[JoJo]

And I want to be voted Mr Universe but wishing won't make it so.

EA, if you really want to be liked then put customer satisfaction ahead of short-term profit and you never know, once your reputation begins to repair you may see those long-term profits rolling in.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

It takes being publicly shamed as the WORST company in America for them to listen. It's sad.

When people say that moaning about something on the internet doesn't help, take note of this little debacle.

It's good that they've made efforts to better their public image, but it's gonna take much much more to win people over at this point.

 

[cerebus23]

EA, I'm not excusing your anti-consumer practices, but there's no way in hell you deserved to be voted 'Worst Company in America' two years in a row, that's a fact. The only reason you ever won that is because the internet is full of introverts who only focus on the smaller picture, ignoring mass corruption or downright illegal and manipulative actions in favor of focusing on online inconveniences and, arguably, lackluster products.

And because the internet also tends to be a vindictive ***** that LOVES to hold a grudge, I don't think you'll be digging yourself out of the hole anytime soon.

While it is true there are bigger fish out there that have more global impact, more people spend personal time and money dealing with EA, than halliburton or whoever you want to put in there as most evil mega corp.

And yes we are very vocal.

But ea could hardly do more to piss people off, from top down that company just excels at treating customers like garbage.

 

[martyrdrebel27]

This started as a list of things that EA could fix, but they know this already, so with my edit, I leave instead this message to EA. This summarizes a lot of peoples' feelings on EA, almost too perfectly.

 

[Ishal]

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH! AHAHAHAHAHA- OH DEAR LORD!

EA, it's good to know that you've got goals in mind, but you've got a LOT of time to make up for and a lot of people you pissed off to win back over. You've spent years digging yourself this pit. It's gonna take years to get out of it.

While I agree with this, at least they seem to be going in the right direction, or at least turning toward it.

I mean, after the 3 strikes of DAII, ME3, and ToR I haven't purchased an EA title since and have no plans to for the future. But if (and thats a big if) they are serious about this and start showing improvement, well... good? I mean, it WILL take them years to crawl out of the hole they dug. But you have to start somewhere.