EA Really Doesn't Want to be The Worst Company In America

[Vaccine]

"The tallest trees catch the most wind," argues EA's Peter Moore.

Some of these complaints are 100 percent legitimate - like all large companies we are not perfect. But others just don't hold water:
[ul]
[li]Many continue to claim the Always-On function in SimCity is a DRM scheme. It's not. People still want to argue about it. We can't be any clearer - it's not. Period. [/li]

[li] Some claim there's no room for Origin as a competitor to Steam. 45 million registered users are proving that wrong. [/li]

[li] Some people think that free-to-play games and micro-transactions are a pox on gaming. Tens of millions more are playing and loving those games. [/li]

[li] We've seen mailing lists that direct people to vote for EA because they disagree with the choice of the cover athlete on Madden NFL. Yes, really...[/li]

[li] In the past year, we have received thousands of emails and postcards protesting against EA for allowing players to create LGBT characters in our games. This week, we're seeing posts on conservative web sites urging people to protest our LGBT policy by voting EA the Worst Company in America. [/li][/ul]

1: Always on connection, it's DRM no matter how you spin it, single player offline mode, was it really that hard and the majority of all this bullshit could've been avoided?
2: "Registered" - I'll hold my breath on how many use it on a regular basis.
3: Don't really follow F2P plays and the like, or play any games of that nature by EA, so skipping this point.
4: And? you cater to that demographic, I don't really see why you get to complain when sports titles are one of your largest money spinners.
5: You're claiming to be a "progressive" company yet are concerned over non-progressive people, if you were to turn that situation on its head LGBT groups would be voting you for worst company in America for caving into these people, I just don't fucking get this point at all.

 

[Newtonyd]

Yea after the whole mass effect 3 thing my support for most things of gamer culture fell into a black abyss, perma-like.
Its just painfully annoying that people harp on EA for the slightest thing, EA support homosexuality? Eh there trying to fool us.

Their treatment of homosexuality has been butter-fingered at best and offensive at worst. Things like all-gay planets in TOR make it clear that either they don't think about what their content means, or don't care.

Moreover, in the past, they've brought up their stance on homosexuality as a reason for the hate against them. Essentially all they are doing is lumping legitimate complaints with bigoted rants so that the legitimate complaints seem to lose their credibility. They try to convince people that the reason players hated Mass Effect 3 so much was because of homophobia, not any story or gameplay issues. Even if you disagree with how the ending was, can you not see that these are the workings of spin-machines to avoid bad PR with misdirection?

Then they spend this entire message talking about how their detractors are wrong, how amazing they are, how many players are have accounts somewhere (meaningless numbers). Basically they dismiss one complaint after another as being a jealous assault against their 'massive company'.

I mean, honestly, how sleazy can a company get before you stop defending them?

 

[Lilani]

Oh, Lordy. EA, stop this. When you have a major PR problem--whether or not you believe it's your fault--you don't sit there and explain which problems you do and don't deserve blame for. When you're trying to appease a bunch of people who hate you, the last thing people want to hear are excuses, or "It's not our fault, really! We're the victims here!" The cold hard truth is that doesn't matter. That doesn't matter to your customers or your stockholders. The only way you can get people to stop blaming you for things you don't deserve is to fix the things you do deserve to be blamed for. People don't go out of their way to find reasons to be angry with Valve because Valve does so much good that even when problems do come up, they have enough goodwill invested in their customers that they are willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. That is the kind of grace that they have earned over a long period of unwavering customer service.

Even if you're still to proud to lower yourself to your customer's level and apologize even when it's not your fault (which is customer service 101), you can still do yourself a favor by not drawing attention to these things by saying "Attention customers: We hear you are angry about this thing we've been doing. Well, we've thought about it, and we've decided that you're wrong. Please change your minds soon so we can start to feel better about ourselves. Have a nice day."

In a situation where the customer is dissatisfied, you are always the culprit, and you are always to be sorry for what happened. Unless you are determined to kick the customer out of your sight and never do service with them again, you are to always be contrite. Period. It doesn't matter if they're wrong. It doesn't matter if there's nothing you could have done. It doesn't matter if they were just looking for reasons to be angry with you. The customer is ALWAYS right.

 

[Signa]

I'd post this as a response on there, but unfortunately they have a rather low character limit on comments. xD

I'm not sure where you're talking about, but you can just post the link to your post.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.405150-EA-Really-Doesnt-Want-to-be-The-Worst-Company-In-America#16811547

That should be short enough I hope. Whether they know the truth of what you said or not, and whether they'd even read your post or not, they still need to have that posted at them.

 

[Tukadian]

I'm not going to say I'm a fan of EA, I've had plenty of problems with their business decisions and their stewardship of some beloved franchises. When THQ went out of business and EA was announced as a bidder on some of the studios I groaned like the rest of the internet.
I gotta say though, this post does give me a little more perspective on it. That maybe EA isn't quuuuite as bad as I always make it out to be. Maybe it's just the easy name to dump on? Whatever the case, Peter Moore, or whoever wrote the statement for him, did an excellent job with that press release. If that was ghostwritten by a member of the PR staff, promote that person immediately. And he does raise an excellent point; how is EA ranked worse than BP or any of the banks in America? EA may screw with some of my favorite franchises, but they don't pollute my oceans and cause national debt crises.

 

[Treblaine]

"Many continue to claim the Always-On function in SimCity is a DRM scheme. It's not. People still want to argue about it. We can't be any clearer - it's not. Period."

This right here is why they definitely won't get best-company-in-America. Maybe it's true, this is as clear as they can be, and that is the whole problem.

Maybe they can change their company motto to "hey, come on, we could be worse, we could be ticketmaster!"

 

[likalaruku]

That whole thing last year for voting on the worst business in America was bullshit, or at least the way they handled it was. Think of the apples-to-oranges comparisons of companies like Sallie Mae & Ticketmaster. I also noticed that companies dealing with entertainment sales always beat out companies that can actually ruin lives. The voters did not have their priorities straight.

 

[Agente L]

Talk about damage control, dayum.

 

[Rad Party God]

Their money meter is running low half a billion. They need moar.

 

[bug_of_war]

EA is'n't going to read this thread, why are you all posting as if it will? Furthermore they don't care anyway. Give up, don't buy there games and complain to them not the escapist.

^YES!

I laughed so hard when I scrolled through all these comments saying, "WHY DON'T YOU LISTEN TO US" and then came apon your comment Evil Smurf. It just rings so much truth, EA wouldn't bother looking on a forum such as this one because the only feedback they look for is the dollar signs.

 

[Vivi22]

[ul]
[li]Many continue to claim the Always-On function in SimCity is a DRM scheme. It's not. People still want to argue about it. We can't be any clearer - it's not. Period. [/li]

[li] Some claim there's no room for Origin as a competitor to Steam. 45 million registered users are proving that wrong. [/li]

[li] Some people think that free-to-play games and micro-transactions are a pox on gaming. Tens of millions more are playing and loving those games. [/li]

[li] We've seen mailing lists that direct people to vote for EA because they disagree with the choice of the cover athlete on Madden NFL. Yes, really...[/li]

[li] In the past year, we have received thousands of emails and postcards protesting against EA for allowing players to create LGBT characters in our games. This week, we're seeing posts on conservative web sites urging people to protest our LGBT policy by voting EA the Worst Company in America. [/li][/ul]

1) They can keep claiming that all they want, but if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a fucking duck. Maybe they started out not thinking of it as solely DRM but as a way to implement online features, but I have little doubt that the execs at EA were happy when they realized it could pull double duty. Even still, it's one problem of many with that game from everything I've read.

2) I'm sure they can make origin look really successful when they purposely inflate the number of total users. Having 45 million registered users is not the same as having 45 million people who actually buy games using it, especially when many of those accounts were converted from previous Origin games. How many of those accounts did EA migrate on behalf of users?

3) Tens of millions of people enjoy playing slot machines. I say enjoy but what I really mean is they're addicted of course. I have no problem with free-to-play or microtransactions when they are implemented fairly and honestly. Now EA isn't exactly Zynga, but I don't think they're the poster child for those qualities just the same.

4) So a minority of customers are stupid? Doesn't mean every other problem people have with them is invalid just because one problem a few people have with them is.

5) They stood up and took a stand on one thing that was worthwhile. Credit where it's due.

 

[Doom972]

They will stop getting this ridiculous "award" when they will learn to please their customers. Until that happens they'll continue to suffer for it. I know that there are worse companies - I might still buy an EA game, but I'll definitely not buy an Activision game in the near future, and haven't in the last few years. EA actually makes games that people care about, but they make some very anti-consumer business decisions. In the end, the angry consumers will prevail - EA know where their money comes from.

 

[Frostbite3789]

Im sure that Activision is a taller tree than EA, yet theyve done nothing to piss off this many people over the last 2 years.

Diablo 3? Every Call of Duty?

 

[Korten12]

Im sure that Activision is a taller tree than EA, yet theyve done nothing to piss off this many people over the last 2 years.

Diablo 3? Every Call of Duty?

The latter is subjectable. Not everyone hates Call of Duty. I wish they would take a break but as long as they stay fun I have no problem. At least when I get Call of Duty there isn't an online pass. As for Diablo 3, well at the time it was just as bad as the Sim City Dabacal.

 

[C2Ultima]

The tallest trees certainly do catch the most wind, especially when they emit methane instead of oxygen and use their branches to chainsaw other trees.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

All I see is questionable excuses and vague references used to make gamers look petty.

If anything this list is an extra reason to vote for them...

If we boycott we risk them killing off decent developers and they will just continue on existing off shovelware. There is literally nothing we can do.

Clearly we can't even make a dent in their ego either.

 

[KeyMaster45]

The tallest trees catch the most wind. At EA we remain proud and unbowed.

*sigh* .....I'll get the chainsaw.

 

[OuroborosChoked]

Am I the only one who noticed the absence of "We keep buying and shutting down previously successful developers after forcing them to publish unfinished games that inevitably bomb... basically driving them into the ground" as a reason people might hate EA?

Yeah, there's really no good PR response to that one. I can see why Petey left it off his little list...