Electronic Arts Suffers $45 Million Loss

[Elithraradril]

The way EA has been destroying the videogame industry may be how commercial entrepreneurship works, but that doesn't cancel out the fact that it's bad for the games industry.

Is it ? Lets think about it for a moment: don't ask "why EA bought them", but "why were they sold in the first place" ? There are several possibilities:
1) "magic" is gone, so lets turn what's left of it into the money. That means that the management lost interest in making games and "forcing it" won't give you a good game
2) studio was on financial downhill, so it would go bankrupt in the near future
3) The vital crew members left for whatever reasons (need of smth new, money, creative differences)
4) Owners are getting greedy and if not bought they would became EA/Activision etc. themself

My point is: you're not selling dev studio if everyone's enjoying they're work, earning lots of money etc.etc., so there was probably smth wrong with these companies, even if we didn't know about it yet.

Try to think about EA as carnivore - killing weakened, so others can have more space to exist. You can't simply blame them for what they are. We're slowly loosing Bioware ? So what, we've got CDProjectRed, Obsidian and others relatively new players. Cheer up.

 

[Kirov Reporting]

This isn't about "empathy" this is about coming into a space where people are celebrating because things are going wrong for the entity that has been continually ruining things they love for years and saying: "NOOOOOO!!!! YOU AREN'T ALLOWED TO BE HAPPY! THINK OF THE POOR EMPLOYEES! YOU GUYS ARE SO AWFUL!" In fact, it's worse than that, because what he said was a backhanded smug implication that everyone who hates EA must just hate the employees, when that makes no fucking sense.

And yes, it is a fucking non-argument, it makes as much sense as saying that we should let murderers walk free/be sad when they're put in prison because they have kids, yeah it sucks that the kid will have to go without his dad for the rest of his life, but ultimately, so fucking what?

Quick, say variations of 'fuck' a few more times, you don't appear to be enough of a renegade badass as it is.

There's no point in discussing this, because quite clearly our viewpoints are incompatible. If you want to celebrate a company losing money, knock yourself out- honestly, if I didn't have family who worked there, it's quite likely I wouldn't care half as much as I do about the fate of the place. However, I do, and as such if everyone gets fired and EA closes forever YAYAYAYAAWESOMEHYPERBOLE then that would have a significant impact.

Also, to address your tortuous analogy; Yes, you can damn sure feel sad that there's a kid who lost a parent. Yes, the father would be facing justice. The end (arguably) does justify the means, but that doesn't mean the kid isn't a victim too, and regardless if the father made the decision to commit murder (by the way, get over yourself with that comparison) the kid is still the one who has been made to suffer. Would you wave a 'hang the murderer' sign in the kid's face?

 

[Sansha]

Good. Excellent.

I really want to play The Sims 3, SimCity and Battlefield3, but I will absolutely not associate with EA. I morally refuse to do business with them, and this has only vindicated my actions.

Keep voting with your wallets. It is working.

Yes! Thousands of people have their jobs at risk! That's what they get for working for a company I don't like! They deserve to lose their job!

Am I doing this right?

JERBS JERBS JERBS JERBS.

This shit again. I don't accept that a shitty company with immoral and stupid practices should stay alive just because of the people who might lose their JEEERRRRRRRBS over its collapse. Companies fall and die due to shitty policies and methods all the damn time. It's how the business world works.

Goddamnit. All people care about is the here and now. As long as people have their precious fucking jobs that someone else should apparently provide for them, they don't care about any stitch of progress.

 

[Sansha]

derple post

 

[ThunderCavalier]

I'm surprised that EA thought that WARFIGHTER now was a bad idea.

It looked mediocre even by a CoD gaming community's low standards.

 

[Slash2x]

Oh EA you never cease to disappoint. I knew that this prediction [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.399809-EA-Chief-Game-Violence-Worries-Are-a-Perception-Problem#16410857] would not take long to be fulfilled.

 

[Pinkamena]

Yes, yeeees. Burn!

 

[Coffeejack]

$45 million loss, you say? Dance, then, wherever you may be!

 

[sailor_960]

Damn. It ain't gonna change a thing, but damn that's a lot of money.

 

[harryhenry]

Yes! Thousands of people have their jobs at risk! That's what they get for working for a company I don't like! They deserve to lose their job!

Am I doing this right?

Finally! someone who i can agree with!

 

[Sexy Devil]

*deleted*

 

[immortalfrieza]

On the other hand: I feel bad for all the innocent people who might lose their job.

On one hand it's a bit hard for me to really stand up and applaud and cheer when a company like EA starts to lose a lot of money, simply because it means that people who had nothing to do with the financial decisions will likely get laid off or their benefits/pay cut so they can continue to prop up the farce of the company.

Wow! this post is so ignorant it almost hurts. There is probably a couple thousand of free opening across the spectrum for all those employees to go to right, I mean especially after all those other studio closings this year. But hay lets just forget that those are people with you know lives and family's because you know the only thing that matters is that I get to play more games.

Yes! Thousands of people have their jobs at risk! That's what they get for working for a company I don't like! They deserve to lose their job!

Am I doing this right?

I hate how people rush to be gleeful at the sight of EA floundering. Many people, including a close member of my family, make their livings working for EA. They feed their families and pay the mortgage working for EA. They get up every morning and put in a full day's hard work working for EA.

Don't like EA's games? Don't buy them, no-one has a gun to your head forcing you. Just be mature enough to have cast the vote with your wallet, and refrain from smugly declaring 'wel its cos their dicks arnt they LOL'.

You make the strike against EA by not buying the games, and maybe that will cause a change in their practices. Gloating over what will probably result in a load of layoffs? That's just cold.

Quite frankly, if people losing their jobs is what the result will be of companies like EA going under, then those are unavoidable and necessary sacrifices, and the video game industry and it's customers will both better off for it. Besides, people are making a big deal over nothing anyway. Why? It's because:

1. Whatever company it is will be bought out and the buyer hire most of the remaining employees along with it.

2. They can get a job in one of the other companies.

3. They can start up their own companies. There are plenty of people that have been and will continue to be laid off or just leave that do this.

4. They can get work in other industries. One of the great things about getting degrees in the various areas of game development and publishing is that pretty much all of the degrees needed for it are applicable to many other industries beside the video game industry.

5. With companies like EA that buy up developers only to run them into the ground and will most likely do so more in the future, it will ultimately SAVE jobs in the long run to have companies like EA die.

6. The fact that people will lose their jobs is a PATHETIC reason to allow dying companies to stay afloat. Survival of the fittest is as much a law of business as it is of the jungle. If a company can't live in the face of it's competition, it doesn't deserve to.

 

[survivor686]

I must admit I find it hard to conjure up any sympathy. With their cutting of content for DLC, origin-ware and lackluster customer support, I now relegate most EA products to discount sales.

 

[LGC Pominator]

I haven't bought an EA game since battlefield 3, and not a day has gone by where that decision has been made to be one I regret

I seriously hope they pull their heads out of their collective backsides soon, otherwise some skilled developers will be on the chopping block

To be honest, as time goes on, I wouldn't be surprised if Zenimax didn't make a bid for some of the underperforming studios in EA's line, what with their current stable of games mainly being focused around the Elder Scrolls series and "franchisising dishonoured", it wouldn't hurt their publishing arm to grab some of the lost IP's of the last generation, because clearly EA doesn't know what the hell it is doing with them.

Hell when Dead Space 3 fails to meet it's minimum 5 million mark, which I can almost guarantee at this stage, they aren't even marketing it all that much, in fact all the marketing I HAVE seen has been this constant barrage of "hey look! HERES ANOTHER WAY WE WILL TRY SCREW YOU OUT OF YOUR CASH!" Which, as far as consumer goodwill is concerned, they aren't going in a good direction.
In the meantime their attempts to draw in the CoD crowd by turning the combat into Gears of Lost Uncharted Planet simply won't succeed for one reason: The CoD crowd is already playing CoD, they don't know that dead space exists, maybe one or two of them have "that nerd friend" who has all the games and they play it at theirs, but they are never going to buy it, because they didn't buy their 360 for that, they bought it for Fifa, CoD and maybe Battlefield, thats about it.

 

[EeviStev]

... that its Origin platform now has more than 39 million registered users ...

This is also a load of shit number... I have an Origin account. Its because I did some creation for my FIFA 11 ultimate team. I always love when these companies make these statements. This is just like my Google+ account existing since I have a gmail account.

The only reason I have an Origin account is that time I bought Heroes of Might and Magic 6 and had to create an O-ccount to register the game. So I was allowed to play the game. Which I already bought. On Steam.

 

[NortherWolf]

EA, its not the economy, its cause you're the most bloated, wasteful, unabashedly evil publisher on the planet.

And as far as the people crying "Think of the people who will lose their jobs." I'm sorry, but when a company does unethical, anti-consumer, exploitative, sleazy shit and puts out sub-par product we can't just let it slide because jobs are on the line.

I wonder how many "Think of the employees" people are the same people that want to shut down the fire-arm industry and want wal-mart gone. Ya know those places employ people to, right? Way, WAY more people than EA.

Not to mention the trend on Escapist to wish places like Game and Gamestop out of business.
"Think of those poor workers!" seem to translate into "Don't touch my favourite company!"

 

[spartandude]

if EA does go under then yes it is a shame that innocent people lose their jobs, it really is. however it isnt my duty to support these people's jobs. i dont have to buy EA products and if i spend money on their competitors because they offer me a better deal then so be it, EA wont get any of my money.

 

[Lilani]

To those who are pitying the others who will go down with EA if they happen to go down: No, they don't deserve to lose their jobs, as much as the people who worked at ENRON and weren't involved in the scandal didn't deserve it, or all of the people who work in the housing market lost work because of the housing bubble they did nothing to cause. But that's just what happens when something bad comes from the inside of a company or group. When big companies go bad, that is the side effect. We are rid of something bad in the economy, but there is also some good that ends up displaced. And there's really no way to avoid that.

 

[hentropy]

On one hand it's a bit hard for me to really stand up and applaud and cheer when a company like EA starts to lose a lot of money, simply because it means that people who had nothing to do with the financial decisions will likely get laid off or their benefits/pay cut so they can continue to prop up the farce of the company.

Quite frankly, if people losing their jobs is what the result will be of companies like EA going under, then those are unavoidable and necessary sacrifices, and the video game industry and it's customers will both better off for it. Besides, people are making a big deal over nothing anyway. Why? It's because:

1. Whatever company it is will be bought out and the buyer hire most of the remaining employees along with it.

2. They can get a job in one of the other companies.

3. They can start up their own companies. There are plenty of people that have been and will continue to be laid off or just leave that do this.

4. They can get work in other industries. One of the great things about getting degrees in the various areas of game development and publishing is that pretty much all of the degrees needed for it are applicable to many other industries beside the video game industry.

5. With companies like EA that buy up developers only to run them into the ground and will most likely do so more in the future, it will ultimately SAVE jobs in the long run to have companies like EA die.

6. The fact that people will lose their jobs is a PATHETIC reason to allow dying companies to stay afloat. Survival of the fittest is as much a law of business as it is of the jungle. If a company can't live in the face of it's competition, it doesn't deserve to.

I don't think anyone is saying they shouldn't fail. Only that We shouldn't sit here and pop the champagne over companies failing. I'm also not talking about the developers, they can probably get by just fine, but rather all the accountants, HR people, IT people, janitors, etc. who work for EA and might not necessarily be able to get another job right away somewhere. People who may only have a cloudy idea of why everyone hates EA, and people who will be laid off because of crap their bosses did. Not something to celebrate, even if it would make the industry as a whole a bit better. There's a difference between realizing the sad reality and ignoring it so you can celebrate the demise of the faceless "bad guy".

In the end EA won't ever "fail" in the traditional sense, they'll be bought out by some other (probably foreign a potentially even worse) company, but that will probably still mean a lot of people being laid off or pay/benefits getting cut.

What we should be hoping for is not their imminent demise, but that they change their leadership and business practices, something that might happen if they start getting into the red for an entire year instead of just a quarter.

 

[mooncalf]

We certainly are spoiled for choice in the FPS arena, our cups runneth over with AAA titles. You begin to feel a bit like Monty Python's obese Mr Creosote being pressed by an obsequious John Cleese to partake of one more slice of Modern Warfare.