An open letter to Electronic Arts

garfoldsomeoneelse

Charming, But Stupid
Mar 22, 2009
2,908
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Dear EA Games,

I recently bought Battlefield 3 for the PC, and while I'm sure the game is excellent, I wouldn't know because you're holding it hostage with an endless parade of terrible fucking executive decisions. I am never giving another cent of my money to your current management so long as I live, and here's why:

Despite driving to the store to buy a physical copy, all I received was a black plastic box containing a passkey and two screen-locking DVDs. After trying to circumvent having autorun.exe blank my screen by going through Origin, my computer inexplicably ignored the DVD sitting in my drive and commenced a trundling download through Origin that took five hours before it even considered installing... and that was that. There was no other way to do it. I don't even know what the fuck, but bear with me, because this is probably the most forgivable part of all this.

Then, the next day, after it was sitting pretty and waiting to be played, I dove into the campaign and jumped back out ten minutes later when I realized it's painfully boring. Hey, no biggie, right? The multiplayer's the only reason anybody would fork over money for this game in the first place, right? So when I tried multiplayer, I discovered that the server list has to be accessed through Firefox (which gets to sit in the background and merrily chew on my CPU alongside the game), and the game has to be cold-booted/exited every time I want to join/leave a server. I was going to include a thorough analysis of this particular feature, but spellcheck insists that I need to insert spaces between the endless string of swears, and frankly, I can't slow the outpouring of eye-boiling hatred enough to do so. Believe it or not, we still haven't gotten to the meat of why I feel so fucked over.

So when your pants-shittingly stupid matchmaking system throws me into a game, I run around for up to about three minutes (current record), getting spawnkilled until it just locks up. The whole goddamn game, that I just paid sixty fuckmothering dollars for... just doesn't work. Don't think I didn't try, EA. I know it's not my job to meet you halfway and try to fix your defective product, but I did. I updated all my drivers, repaired every network utility that your program had perverted on installation, knocked the graphics settings back to the stone age, trawled message boards for hours looking up archaic and worthless solutions in hopes that I'd find the one that makes your special kind of retardation gel with a computer that blows away the recommended specs... and here I am, five hours later, with BF3.exe still clamping its jaws shut before I even get the tip in. I wouldn't have been happy even if I did manage to fix it, because that's like having to go into your DVD player and tool around with the settings and software for hours just to watch a movie you just bought... but since it still doesn't work, I'm beyond pissed.

So, really, the only thing that functions thanks to your anti-piracy extremism is the boring-ass campaign, which I could've pirated for free months ago. I decided to legitimately purchase this product with money that god knows could've gone to better uses, just so I could access the multiplayer, and because you want to whip your paying customers for the money you're "losing" to piracy, I got the exact same gimpy version I would've gotten if I'd fucking pirated it. That's not irony, that's rape.

Your company has wronged me (and according to what google turned up during my diagnostics, at least thousands of others) and I refuse to enable your greedy bullshit with my money ever again. May your genitals be devoured by wolverines.

Sincerely,
-SODAssault

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.
 

Lilani

Sometimes known as CaitieLou
May 27, 2009
6,581
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Are you going to email this to EA, or post it on the Origin boards? I hope you do.
 

Dandark

New member
Sep 2, 2011
1,706
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For the first few days I thought I may regret not getting BF3. Soooooooo glad I didn't waste my money on it now, I would have regretted buying it and have gotten much better value spending the money I would have bought BF3 with on skins for LoL instead.

**** EA, may you have a much better time gaming when you avoid there terrible products.
 

Emiscary

New member
Sep 7, 2008
990
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Never forget. Ever. Because they're doing their best to forget about all this shit *right now*, and they'll do it alllllll over again if we let them.
 

tippy2k2

Beloved Tyrant
Legacy
Mar 15, 2008
14,316
1,492
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I am under the assumption that this is actually an open letter to fans and not to the company. IF you truly want it to be an open letter to the company and have them actually take you seriously, I have a few suggestions...

Stop swearing. Seriously, casually dropping "fucking" into your letter makes you sound like a child and no company is going to take you seriously. I don't go to Best Buy and tell them that my fucking stereo stopped fucking working so I'd really fucking appreciate it if they fucking did something to fix my fucking situation...fuck!

Let's say that the rep looks at your letter and decides "Maybe he's just really mad, I'll let the swearing go". Then we get to the end:

May your genitals be devoured by wolverines.
Your letter has just become shredded (or possibly put on a reps wall as part of their "Hall of Shame" customers). No business in the history of the world is going to take you seriously when you start with the personal attacks.

Maybe I'm taking your letter too seriously and you actually just wanted to vent. But if you truly wanted to post this for EA and truly HOPE that someone takes notice, no one is going to take it seriously if all you're going to do is swear and insult them. If all you wanted to do was vent, you can ignore my suggestions and carry on...
 

Adam Jensen_v1legacy

I never asked for this
Sep 8, 2011
6,651
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No in-game server browser was a definite deal breaker for me. What kind of PC game doesn't have a god damn server browser in the actual game? I have to use internet browser instead? Fuck off!
 

Weaver

Overcaffeinated
Apr 28, 2008
8,977
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Adam Jensen said:
No in-game server browser was a definite deal breaker for me. What kind of PC game doesn't have a god damn server browser in the actual game? I have to use internet browser instead? Fuck off!
Myself as well. There's no way I was putting up with that.
Watching my roommate fight with the damn thing is almost embarrassing. I really don't know how any publication gave the PC version more than a 5/10 with that wonky piece of shit. I'm sure the game's fun if you can get to play it, but having an architectural nightmare code-wise and a half functional server browser should really have knocked some points off IMO.
 

Freechoice

New member
Dec 6, 2010
1,019
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I have one question directed at anyone that can answer this. Does the PC version of Modern Warfare 3 function better than Battlefield 3?
 

Doclector

New member
Aug 22, 2009
5,010
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Honestly, if you're looking at this and thinking, "gee, I really wanna play battlefield 3, but I don't want to put up with this BS" The console versions are mostly free of this. Don't think EA didn't try, of course, I just think they couldn't get around the stricter restrictions to implement their devil spawn.

BUT...you shouldn't have to choose a console version. NOBODY should. Choice is a beautiful thing, and the choice between consoles and pc should be between control pads and mouses, straightforward put it in and play vs massive amounts of tweakability and mods, all of that.

It should not be in any way because of the game itself and what you have to go through to get it working. This means no BS DRM, no stupidly made download services that you HAVE TO use, and no sneaky conman business. Honestly, I believe it's gone too far. For too long have gamers had inferior consumer rights compared to all other forms of entertainment, and it's about time companies like EA had some serious legal watchdogs put upon them, to make sure that gaming reaches the consumer rights standards that every form of entertainment has to meet.
 

Owyn_Merrilin

New member
May 22, 2010
7,370
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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.
 

NLS

Norwegian Llama Stylist
Jan 7, 2010
1,594
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Owyn_Merrilin said:
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.
Exactly this, you're half a year late to the rage-party. 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. Same thing goes for just about any online-multiplayer game you buy half a year++ after release, sure you could actually start up the games right after install, but no servers would be online with an outdated version of the game. The alternative would be to go patch-hunting on the internet for the right version, which itself was quite a hassle back in the day before Steam/Origin. (EU or US version? install 1.5 before 1.6? What about 1.5.1? Dead links?)
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.
 

someonehairy-ish

New member
Mar 15, 2009
1,949
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All I can say really is 'fuck that'. I don't buy things from EA any more. Not since they gutted Spore to sell off all the individual organs as expansion packs.
 

Epidemiix

Custom Title Yay!
Jan 3, 2012
124
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SODAssault said:
I dove into the campaign and jumped back out ten minutes later when I realized it's painfully boring. Hey, no biggie, right? The multiplayer's the only reason anybody would fork over money for this game in the first place, right? .
I don't know whether I should say that I bought the game mainly for the single player, or that I should cry because I bought the game for the single player....

All and all to me BF3 was a huge disappointment (won't go into it... I did that already on another post :D)for me. After watching what EA has been doing for awhile I think that I could now put myself in the category of "fed up" and "tired" of EA's shenanigans.

After making three separate games that I was looking forward to ending up being disappointments, and the incredibly strange marketing that EA pulls that makes the games industry look like a bunch of immature children.... I think I am kinda done with them...