E.A. is destroying the gaming business?

[4RM3D]

There is a general consensus that EA is doing more bad than good to the gaming business.

Quite a few arguments have been made against EA (in no specific order):
- The forced use of Origin (a broken system)
- The gaming companies EA has bought and pretty much wrecked
- EA Bioware is under constant fire (Mass Effect 3, Dragon Age 2, (EDIT) Star Wars: ToR)
- EA looking for easy cash grabs (which has been brought up again since Dead Space 3 announcement)
- Whenever sometimes goes wrong at EA, instead of admitting they screwed up, they are blaming it on other things (like they did with Warfighter)
- (EDIT) Rolling out yearly installments of the same game (e.g. EA Sports)

...And the list probably goes on.

My question is two-fold:
- Do you believe EA is harming the gaming business?
- Do you still buy games from EA?

I ask because I still see a lot of people pre-ordering / buying games from EA and at the same time see a lot of people complaining about EA. So, why don't just stop buying their games altogether?

On a side note, I should mention that the shit storm that was the ending of Mass Effect 3, did show the incredible influence Bioware holds over people and in turn that gamers can rise and stand up.

 

[gyrobot_v1legacy]

Stop acting like it's the end of the world every time someone mentions EA.

 

[ShinyCharizard]

EA aren't destroying the game business. They are slowly destroying their own business. The game business is doing fine.

 

[Kirov Reporting]

Skillful rebuttal

Thanks, you said everything I would want to say here.

I will just add though, EA aren't destroying the gaming business, quite the opposite- they're a core part of it.

In fact, it may just be their dedication to fulfilling both the 'gaming' and 'business' parts of the term that means they've survived as long as they have.

 

[sanquin]

Eh, EA isn't ruining the gaming business as a whole. Just their own business. (Though it's taking far longer than I expected for people to take notice that you shouldn't buy EA's shit on day one, and instead wait and see for a week or two before deciding.)

What I do think however is that all the AAA developing companies are shifting more and more to a 'screw the customer, we want our money in any way possible' business model. With more and more 'anti-piracy' measures that don't actually prevent piracy and only inconvenience actual buyers, and trying to invent more and more ways to prevent used games sales. On top of that also more and more micro transaction and DLC additions to games that are just obvious cash grabs. Yea...if anything, it's the gaming business as a whole (or at least the AAA business) that's ruining things. Not just EA.

Which is why I'm hoping that the better indie developers will take over and become the new AAA developers, while the current ones slowly die off. Sure, it will just repeat the cycle eventually if that happens, but at least we'll have a few years without too much bullshit again.

 

[Rawne1980]

- The gaming companies EA has bought and pretty much wrecked
We going to get the sob story of how EA killed Westwood again? Forgetting to mention that the original founders of Westwood were the ones that sold out and about half the employees walked out the door the sec they did? No we keeping the revisionist history then? Ok then. Welcome to business. Wrecks happen. Did EA wreck THQ while they were at it?

Westwood?

Original HQ in San Mateo, California, moved to Redwood City in 1998.
Origin Systems in Austin, Texas founded in 1983, acquired in 1992, closed in 2004.
Bullfrog Productions in Surrey, England, founded in 1987, acquired in 1995, merged with EA UK and effectively closed in 2001.
EA Baltimore in Baltimore, Maryland, established in 1996 as part of Origin, closed in 2000
EA Seattle in Seattle, Washington, founded in 1982 as Manley & Associates, acquired January 29, 1996, closed in 2002
Maxis in Walnut Creek, California, founded in 1987, acquired in June 1997, folded into Redwood Shores (now Visceral Games) in 2004
Westwood Studios in Las Vegas, Nevada, founded in 1987, acquired from Virgin Interactive Entertainment in August 1998, merged into EA Los Angeles in 2003.
EA Pacific (known for a time as Westwood Pacific) in Irvine, California, formerly part of Virgin Interactive, acquired with Westwood in 1998, closed in 2003
Kesmai (known also as GameStorm), founded in 1981, acquired in 1999, closed in 2001.
DICE Canada in London, Ontario, started in 1998, acquired DICE fully October 2, 2006; closed DICE Canada studio hours later.
EA Japan in Tokyo, Japan, closed due to consolidation; moved under EA Partners model
EA UK in Chertsey, United Kingdom, moved to EA UK in Guildford
EA Chicago in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, founded in 1990 as NuFX, acquired in 2004, closed November 6, 2007.
Pandemic Studios in Los Angeles, California and Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, founded in 1998, acquired October 2007 from Elevation Partners, closed November 17, 2009.
Bright Light, in Guildford, Surrey, formerly EA UK, closed in 2011.

Bullfrog was the biggest loss for me.... No Dungeon Keeper 3.

On Topic....

Nope, EA are not bad for the gaming business.

EA only do what gamers allow them to.

Of course they are going to push to see where they can make money, they are a business. Believe it or not, business like to make money.

If gamers didn't swallow everything they did then they wouldn't do it but everything they do makes them money so they carry on.

Can't blame EA when people still throw money at them.

 

[Rawne1980]

Why did you put Westwood on the list when I just put down the circumstances.

Not my list, that's why it's in a quote.

You really think I can be arsed going through a list of companies that no longer exist?

People don't care about reasons. All they know is that developer exists, EA buys, developer vanishes .... EA is Satan.

 

[Auron]

Activision is much worse. (and the reason we pay 60$ for games too)

Origin works very well, people should give it a try before talking about it. It's cloud stores savegames pretty efficiently and it's porting EA's backlog(some of which weren't even available on steam to begin with) and allowing you to add old keys to the library, is itunderhanded how they promoted it making every new release exclusive? No, it's underhanded that they tried to spin it around with numerous excuses I'll give you that.

- EA Bioware is under constant fire (Mass Effect 3, Dragon Age 2)
By a relatively small demographic in an echo chamber yes (relative to the number of customers). Yeah thats the problem with the internet. You can easily find yourself in a bubble.

Pretty much yeah, whiners can be very vocal.

- EA looking for easy cash grabs (which has been brought up again since Dead Space 3 announcement)

http://us.blizzard.com/store/details.xml?id=1100001913 - Just them?


The only thing I have against EA is how they did close some excellent studios they purchased, arguably most would have died either way but some were affected by extremely tight deadlines and then closed when the games didn't sell as much because of bugs and incompletion. They wrecked both TOR and WAR by making both more wow-ish contrary to the developer's initial intentions and ended up killing both games potential. It's a considerable case but they still publish quite a bunch of excellent studios and games.


No I don't think they're ruining the games industry and yes I buy games published by then if I like them why the hell wouldn't I? I'd miss out on titles I'm interested for no gain at all. The masses will still buy enough of it unless it's just a bad game like Warfighter or the new Syndicate.

 

[Joccaren]

EA aren't harming the industry as such. They're harming their company, and turning some great games and game companies that they bought into piles of crap, but its not having a massive effect on their competitors so far as I can tell. If anything, they're helping their competitors by doing so by driving business away from them.

As for buying EA games... Depends. Most EA games I'm not interested in in the first place, and their shitty practices just give me no incentive to even try to get into them - see Dead Space 3 as one example. When they do release a game I'll enjoy though, I will buy it unless it receives poor reviews from sources I trust. If its a good game I'm not going to not buy it because its EA that made it, if its broken because of EA or for some other reason though, I'm not interested.

 

[Drizzitdude]

I personally hate EA just for their buisness practices,

Example One :" Oh whats that consumer? you bought the year old game used? HOW DARE YOU! You get nothing from us unless you throw us 10 pity dollars for the online pass to pay the online portion of the game we clearly labeled as part of the core experience on the back of the box. Read the fine print *****."

Example Two: "Hey gamers! Man we are so ahead of our own schedule that we decided to get to work on day one DLC! What? no it most certainly wasn't planned from the start and certainly does not contain certain elements that can be critical to the plot. But why should it matter? It isn't like we just decided to not include this bit of a gem on disc right? Buy it, buy it, buy it!"

Example Three: "Woah, hang on there partner! Your saying there are these "free to play" games, that despite high production costs, manage to pay for themselves through micro-transactions from dedicated communities who enjoy the game and want to support it? Why that's a marvelous idea! The micro-transaction bit I mean, and we should also put it on features we would have otherwise included free of charge! Genius!"

Example Four: So we here at EA hear you guys like one of our games? Well don't worry, we fully plan on making a sequel of said game while throwing key features that you enjoyed the first game into our furnace. What do you mean you liked dead space as a single player horror game? Twice the players, twice the payments! I mean....er..fun! What do you mean you liked the rpg elements of mass effect? Our chart here clearly indicates from all those call of duty sales that the majority of the gamer population likes to shoot things a bunch and not have to worry about upgrading gear, or leveling skills. You should be happy we removed half of those pesky buggers!

Example Five:
EA "Say you know how you said we should walk, feed and take care of your favorite IP/studio while you were at summer camp?"
Me: "yeah?"
EA: "We he ...er...ran away. Yeah. He ran away while you were at summer camp, your never going to see him again"

Overall I just think EA as a company are just a bunch of assholes who only care about what is in your wallet. I love some of the game they put out (Dead space, Mass effect, Dragon Age) but I hate how all unique attributes and creativity seems to be smothered by the suits who want the studios to take the safer options to ensure sales. At least that is how it seems to me.

 

[Zhukov]

Meh.

If people are still buying their products in sufficient numbers for them to make a solid profit then their business practices are clearly not unbearably bad. If their business practices really are terrible then people will stop buying their stuff and they will gradually go out of business and the problem will solve itself.

I just disregard most of this stuff and don't feel that my life is any poorer for it. Terrible overpriced DLC? I just don't buy it. Therefor I am unaffected and the world keeps turning.

I've used Origin for a couple of games (BF3 and ME3). I wasn't too pleased about being forced into install another store/library client but it worked pretty well. Some gripes, but no showstoppers. Besides, the forced use is the same as Valve with Steam which I also use.

Not getting into the Bioware stuff because, Jesus Fucking Christ, that discussion has gotten beyond stale.

 

[Bostur]

I ask because I still see a lot of people pre-ordering / buying games from EA and at the same time see a lot of people complaining about EA. So, why don't just stop buying their games altogether?

Those two groups may not be the same people though. Assuming that one group of 100 people loudly complains about EAs practices, there may be another group of 1000 people buying their stuff without even knowing about the first group or making their opinion known. If there is a silent majority we wont know about them or know what they think.

There may also be a group of people who disagree with their business practices but like their games. What are they to do? Should they stop buying games they like? Thats one of the limitations of the idea of consumer influence. Consumption can be a political tool, but it's mostly not. Most people buy stuff because they need it or want it, not to make a political statement.


I think EA is doing some harm and especially have in the past. Their size and influence certainly serves to streamline part of the industry and reducing variety. At the moment I think they are mostly harming themselves though.

I don't buy EA games myself. Mostly due to their distribution terms. If they had more agreeable terms I might have checked out DS3 or ME3. But at the moment I don't even have any reasonable way to purchase their stuff. If they don't want to sell their games to the general public, thats their own choice.

 

[Pulse]

If I think the fun I'll get out of the game is worth the money, then I get it. If not, I don't. I don't have an agenda beyond playing games for fun.

THQ made great games. THQ went bust. Obviously there were alot of factors but maybe it could have survived if it prevented resale of used games. I mean, I bought both saints row and space marine used. I'm sure other people did too.

I think developers are perfectly within their rights to try prevent used game purchases, that's what led to codes and multiplayer being tacked on on every game. So I'm not annoyed if I pick up a game for £3 only to find I'm missing out on a couple of weapons, or even multiplayer...because i paid as much as I would on a sandwich on something which gave me hours and hours of fun.

We want as much as we can get for our money, they want as much of our money for as little as they can get away with. That's just the way it is. If it's not worth it don't buy it and economics will do the rest, that's the great thing about competition.

 

[veloper]

EA were big pioneers of DRM with Spore and ME1 and Origin may still be worse than most, but other than that EA cannot do significantly more damage now than other big publishers can.

Banning players and taking their entire Origin game libraries away for trivial reasons, such as intalling mods for your (singleplayer)games or making critical or funny forum posts, making this official policy and also putting that power in the hands of bored, careless moderators is the worst offense that does make EA stand out negatively from the rest of the publishers.

It shows a total disregard for your customers. This is the worst thing any company can do, from both a moral and a business perspective.
While banned Origin users nolonger make the news anymore and EA are maybe less careless now with abusing their ban hammers, trust takes a very long time to build up and EA don't earn it back yet.

Fortunately for PC gamers, EA don't have any must-play titles anymore. BF3 is just another military shooter; quality but not unique. Bioware have gone further down the shitter too and have also moved their focus to consoles besides, so PC gamers don't miss out on anything special if they don't use Origin.

 

[4RM3D]

- The forced use of Origin (a broken system)
Unlike the forced use of Steam?
Origin is not without its merits, and while it doesn't suppass the current lvl steam has gotten to by being the first to really strike it big it by far surpasses what steam used to be. If you want to hold this against EA then keep your complaining consistent.

Steam has been very successful and EA wants a piece of the action. So, it is understandable EA wants an own version of Steam. EA is big enough to pull it off. But they made all the bad choices when launching Origin. Now people are looking at it as yet another troublesome gaming platform.

- The gaming companies EA has bought and pretty much wrecked
We going to get the sob story of how EA killed Westwood again? Forgetting to mention that the original founders of Westwood were the ones that sold out and about half the employees walked out the door the sec they did? No we keeping the revisionist history then? Ok then. Welcome to business. Wrecks happen. Did EA wreck THQ while they were at it?

Not just Westwood... Origin (the studio, that is), Dice, Criterion, Maxis, Bullforg, Bioware, Mythic...

I suppose not every studio would have survived without EA. Then again being absorbed into EA in such a way nothing remains of the original studio isn't really surviving either. It would have been nice if EA at least gave us the impression they were using the acquired studios to do some good.

- EA Bioware is under constant fire (Mass Effect 3, Dragon Age 2)
By a relatively small demographic in an echo chamber yes (relative to the number of customers). Yeah thats the problem with the internet. You can easily find yourself in a bubble.

"By a relatively small demographic?" Honestly I wouldn't know. But the fallout from the Mass Effect 3 ending gives me the impression it is a relatively BIG demographic. I know it is often the smallest group having the biggest voice, but that is not the impression I got here.

- EA looking for easy cash grabs (which has been brought up again since Dead Space 3 announcement)
I am sorry I am going to break this to you, but none of the game developers love you. They dont even know you. They are looking for the best way to get as much money from their work as possible. Just like you are trying to get as much product as possible from your money. Greedy greedy both of you. You dont like the deal, then walk away and take your money else were. This is business. Not a Democracy. Only voice that matters is the one you do with your wallet.

Cold, hard and often true words. Once game studios go "corporate" they start caring less about their customers and more about the best way to make the most money. Fortunately there are still studios out there that care about their fan base. Also, even if game companies go "corporate", they could still handle their PR and customer interaction well. But EA doesn't do this properly either.

- Whenever sometimes goes wrong at EA, instead of admitting they screwed up, they are blaming it on other things (like they did with Warfighter)
Yes we have never seen anything about EA admitting fault. I mean its not like a thread jumped out about how a beta tester got banned from Simcity for posting in a thread turned out to be nothing but jumping the gun, and as soon as it was cleared up then it is like it never happened. Like as if people were actively looking for fuck ups to rage about, but wont even admit fault when they jump the gun....

How about EA blaming reviewers/critics for poor game sales?

EA aren't destroying the game business. They are slowly destroying their own business. The game business is doing fine.

That might be closer to the truth, yeah.

Activision is much worse. (and the reason we pay 60$ for games too)

Yup, Activision is pretty bad also. Putting games for $60+ on Steam. But what is worse it that people are actually keep buying those games at those prices. But to be honest, it is their money they are wasting. However when they start complaining about not having money or can't buy all the games they want, that might fall on deaf ears.

http://us.blizzard.com/store/details.xml?id=1100001913 - Just them?

True, it is not just EA. But in the case of Blizzard, it isn't as bad. All the items are vanity items that have no real impact on the world. If blizzard would start selling equipment, that would be bad. Also, it's a MMORPG which act by a different set of 'rules' than a single player game.

If gamers didn't swallow everything they did then they wouldn't do it but everything they do makes them money so they carry on.

Can't blame EA when people still throw money at them.

I suppose that is the problem.