An open letter to Electronic Arts

[Racecarlock]

Oh my god this thread is so original! No, really! This totally isn't the 32nd thread about ea being evil this week.

If there are still 'EA is Evil' threads appearing, then there is still a problem. I won't say that posting in forums is the best way to show EA the error of their ways, but at the very least it will continue to raise consumer awareness. We at least helped some people avoid getting ripped off by EA in the future.

Yeah, but why not just bump one of the other "EA is Evil" topics?

 

[Arcane_squirrel]

i would keep my boycott up of ea games but they just own so many damn ip's. god they are such a bad company

 

[Altorin]

lol, your letter sort of fell apart at the end when you started kissing their ass

 

[Cabisco]

I'm gonna be all controversial and say as an xbox360 user I don't mind EA, in fact they've given me some lovely games over the years and I blame Bioware for the shite that is the ME3 ending.

If you've had a problem with them thats a shame and I hope you maintain not buying any of their games as a statement of 'voting with your wallet' as really thats the only way problems like this can get sorted. Far too many people complain and complain about things and yet continue to buy everything pumped out.

I hope now that you've fixed the problem you are enjoying Battlefield 3, it's a great game.

 

[targren]

i would keep my boycott up of ea games but they just own so many damn ip's. god they are such a bad company

I came up to an interesting dilemma last week: Dungeon Keeper was on GOG.

I decided to break my EA boycott as far as to buy it, in the vain, tiny hope that it would encourage them to be less raging douche canoes in the future. "Voting with my wallet," as it were.

 

[garfoldsomeoneelse]

lol, your letter sort of fell apart at the end when you started kissing their ass

DICE = The developer who is responsible for creating the excellent Battlefield series since forever. Receives all of my ass-kisses for making what has remained my favorite FPS series for years.

EA = The publisher who is responsible for distributing and promoting the excellent Battlefield series, recently in the stupidest ways conceivable. Can kiss my ass for completely cocking up an otherwise pristine experience.

Please do not conflate the two, as one is objectively better than the other.

Oh my god this thread is so original! No, really! This totally isn't the 32nd thread about ea being evil this week.

You are implying that I'm jumping on a bandwagon when the subject is entirely about being personally inconvenienced by the aforementioned publisher. If being exasperated by the problems I've encountered can be considered "unoriginal", I would consider that a testament to how many other people have decided first-hand that EA's business conduct is sorely lacking.

If it helps, though, I can ask EA to make my next poor experience with them as unique as possible.

Also, that means there's been a bunch of updates, patches and DLC released since October last year. Which is why you had to download all that extra stuff before you could play.

I'm afraid you misread the OP and may have assumed this was the first Battlefield game I've ever purchased. I am no stranger to the endless chain of sequential patches normally required to catch up with the game and am willing to tolerate it when it's necessary (I have to do it every time I get nostalgic and pop in one of the previous Battlefield games). What actually occurred was Origin deciding that the game DVDs I bought were worthless and made me wait five hours to download all 11gb of the actual game, from the engine to the textures, despite my explicit attempt to obtain a physical copy (that apparently will never install without an internet connection, a shitload of bandwidth and enough time to make a potroast).

But nice to see that you enjoyed the game itself in the end. Battlelog can feel like a step backwards at times, but the game experience itself is worth it in my opinion.

Absolutely am enjoying it, since EA can't do much to bungle the gameplay itself (which as I've stated, is amazing... in multiplayer, at least). I still stand by my opinion that Battlelog is ridiculous and clumsy compared to the traditional hard-coded UI, but I will concede one thing: being able to pop into a game whenever I want without having to leave a processor-devouring program running in the background is kinda sweet.

Honestly, OP, while I agree that this is shitty, I have to ask how you bought BF3 this far after launch day without knowing about Origin. The DRM was well documented before it was released, let alone afterwards.

I knew Origin was shit, but I had it figured for a bloated Steam with terrible prices and a touch of spyware. What I didn't expect was for it to be poorly-coded and actively hinder my ability to play the game until certain compatibility issues were resolved by the user. I realize the initial uproar came and went with the surge of purchases following its release, but I only recently had enough money in my budget to pick it up for myself and I don't believe my status as a late-adopter disqualifies me from taking issue with the same poor experience everyone else apparently had.

 

[PlowmanMk]

EDIT: Refused to give up on it and found a pretty straightforward fix that none of my first thousand queries even wanted to imply. Now that it's stable and running, I can say that the game itself is the best thing that ever happened to my computer. Still not pleased with the issues I had with getting it to a playable state (nor any of my other grievances), but with that aside, DICE knows how to make a HELL of a shooter. This game is THE SHIT in ways that make me nostalgic for BF2, and I'm sorry it had to be slightly mangled by the publisher before it reached me.

I don't mean to disparage the developer. If you're willing to put up with a lot of stupid on the way to the parts you thought you were paying for, it's really worth the money... it's just a shame that a fair bit of that money goes to a publisher with a lot of really bad ideas.

Pretty much how I feel about BF3. It is an absolute blast, but it is riddled with design flaws. Quite a shame, really. Hopefully developers will learn from this (although that is quite unlikely).

 

[Ickorus]

I recently got the game with some vouchers I got because another order from the website I purchased for was cancelled due to them fucking up on the price (Secret world was going for £5 instead of £40) so I got the game for free (I wasn't going to get it at all but I checked their ToS & Privacy Policy and it had changed enough for me to be OK using Origin) and I gotta say, I think it's pretty good.

I also didn't have a problem installing, yeah it did it through Origin and it took a while but it definitely installed from the disk rather than downloading so I'm kinda confused as to what happened to you there, maybe your disk was duff.

I will say that going for the realistic style has been a problem for me as a colour-blind guy because all the smoke and shit on the screen makes it very hard for me to pick out targets, a problem I didn't have in BF2.

 

[Evil Smurf]

Are you going to email this to EA, or post it on the Origin boards? I hope you do.

No, because then, he'd get his account disabled and his games deleted. The games he legitimately owns. For telling the truth.

Damn. This is where pirates start

 

[garfoldsomeoneelse]

Are you going to email this to EA, or post it on the Origin boards? I hope you do.

No, because then, he'd get his account disabled and his games deleted. The games he legitimately owns. For telling the truth.

Do you have evidence of this happening before?

If so that is pretty damming stuff. That is definitely a FSA report worthy.

Here you go. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/87102-EA-Get-Banned-From-Forums-Lose-Your-Games] Pretty sure the EULA acts as their official BOHICA clause.

 

[Grey Day for Elcia]

I look forward to everyone purchasing the next big EA series and then complaining on the forum.

 

[Whateveralot]

Dear EDIT: Refused to give up on it and found a pretty straightforward fix that none of my first thousand queries even wanted to imply.

Thanks for actually mentioning what solved your problems. I've suffered those problems myself and I simply gave up looking for a solution.

Mind putting what you've done here on these forums?

 

[garfoldsomeoneelse]

Dear EDIT: Refused to give up on it and found a pretty straightforward fix that none of my first thousand queries even wanted to imply.

Thanks for actually mentioning what solved your problems. I've suffered those problems myself and I simply gave up looking for a solution.

Mind putting what you've done here on these forums?

Every forum post I'd found at first either vaguely mentioned updating your drivers (done ad nauseam) or had a weird-ass solution that involved cracking open the ini files or network clients to make weird, minute changes. My specific fix came in the form of finally discovering that I needed a very specific driver suite for my Radeon card to function with the game (AMD Catalyst Control Center [http://www.amd.com/us/products/technologies/amd-catalyst/pages/catalyst.aspx], about 150mb in size) instead of the normal ones that self-applied and automatically updated when I used the onboard utilities to roll them forward. Why it wouldn't work without Catalyst when the then-current drivers would shred all other modern games is beyond me.

This only stopped the multiplayer from crashing for me, though, any other problems you have with Origin or BF3 probably won't be touched by this fix.

 

[Suicidejim]

I read the entirety of the OP in the voice of Serj Tankian. That's really all I've got to contribute, I don't generally buy or play EA games.