I want to re-evaluate my stance on EA.

[Irick]

It's as simple as that. Has EA changed recently? What have they done that is good? What have they done that is bad?
I'm not looking for arguments about how good a game is, but more about how they treat consumers. I want to consider recent events, but I honestly lost the beat of EA in the midsts of my boycott

So... care to help me build up my understanding of their current business practices?

 

[GloatingSwine]

Well, they might have just about patched Battlefield 4 to the state that it's ready to release by now (and it hasn't even been out a year yet).

Origin has better customer service than Steam I guess, if you want someone to say something nice about them, but that's not difficult, I have better customer service than Steam and I'm an asshole.

 

[Pr0]

I will give EA credit for its customer service. I recently contacted them with deep misgivings about my purchase of The Sims 4 and informed them that I had requested an automatic refund for the product, (yes I like playing with dolls, judge away), instead of ignoring the concerns they were forwarded on to the Maxis offices in full, in which I actually received email responses back from Maxis staff in regards to the concerns that weren't just randomized corporate speak.

After that I contacted EA again and told them I wanted to cancel my refund request and that while I still felt the game was not even a foot in the pool of its previous incarnations that my enjoyment of the series over the years and my hope for the potentials of the product justified re-analyzing my refund request, the CS agent took care of the refund request immediately, and on top of that, gifted me all the Sims 3 EP content I didn't already own and the complete Sims 2 collection, for my loyalty to the series...which I thought was fairly cool, I'm not likely to play TS2 any time soon but its nice to have the games on digital demand now as I wouldn't be able to tell you where my CD's went for those over the ages here.

Overall EA's customer service is getting rather outstanding, but I'm really going to have to see how DA3 pans out before I decide on whether their development environment has changed substantially enough to let their good developers develop good games rather than just serialized garbage that mangles the very subject material it rose from (*stares meaningfully at my N7 Hoody and my Darth Malgus statue for a moment*)

Overall while customer service is a good thing and EA does seem like its really invested in trying to win their customers back, they have yet to overcome previous title failures and debacles in a meaningful manner to make me believe that their development ethics have changed at their core or not, in fact....The Sims 4 seemed like more of a confirmation that the development ethics haven't changed at all...but then they turned around and announced that most of the "missing features" are coming back as free upgrade content...so I dunno.

They're trying, I think thats a good start.

 

[Morgoth780]

EA does some pretty decent PC ports. While BF4 of course has had all of sorts of problems since launch (many of which have been fixed, now it's mostly just not entirely perfect netcode), it had a pretty good PC port. FOV slider, unlocked framerate, rebindable keys (and you can have both a mouse button and keyboard key bound to the same action.)

They're far better than Ubisoft in that regard

 

[Cyberstrike_v1legacy]

I the new CEO is having to clean up the mess the old CEO left, I'm not excusing them for the clusterfuck over The Sims 4 but I would not lay 100% of the blame at the feet of the new CEO (I would lay about 50% of the blame).

I also like that they pushed back the release date on DA:I to allow BioWare more time to tweak it and make it better and starting the Dragon Age Keep website.

 

[Fractral]

Now I've never had to use the Steam Customer serice, but when my Origin account got hacked (which I embarrasingly only picked up on when emails started arriving in Russian) the support guy was able to fix it within a few minutes and gave me helpful advice for making sure it never happened again.
So yeah, I'm not particularly upset at EA at the moment. I may even buy some of their games in the near future, if they release anything that interests me (like a DA bundle on PC).

 

[Arfreid]

It's easy to judge EA for having very, very BAD business practices, everytime a new game appears I am on the defensive because, lately, it feels that their products are buggy, incomplete or chopped off on purpouse, and I don't like that.

In terms of customer service, I've never had any problems with them, I would even say that I have been treated really well; I complained for a refund on a newly released game and it was given to me, no questions asked, also, they have been giving games for free (Dragon Age:Origins) and the pricing is fair in comparison to other vendors (especially if you don't live in the US, like me)

If EA released their games properly and uncut, I would not be on the defensive for their games. I would welcome them... Which is not the case, sadly.

 

[Not Lord Atkin]

I never thought EA was particularly bad. Ok, yes, they used to be pretty horrible but most of the issues they had came from ignorance and lack of understanding of the market as opposed to sheer malevolence (I'm looking at you, Activision). They fucked up pretty badly a couple times but I still think that Ubisoft is a worse publisher when it comes to consumer relations.

And EA have been trying. They really have been. You can tell that they have been actively working on becoming a better company. To me, the fact that they care at all is a huge sign of improvement.

That is not to say they have magically become a good company all of the sudden. They are still pretty far from that. But they have made a step in the right direction and I think that deserves to be acknowledged.

 

[Insideout Ink Demon]

well, they gave away Dragon Age 1, which was coll of them. Although i do already have it on PS3 and Steam. their user interface is better than Uplay.(which wont let you delete demo's from your account)

I'd just say they seem a bit soulless, fee to pay DLC milking etc. But I think so long as these things are done openly, i think we can weed these practices out by wallet voting.
I can't think of any recent bad things they've done

 

[SilverLion]

I'm worried. EA is never this nice unless they're doing something that they KNOW will piss people off and cause them to boycott them, so they act all nice so that you'll be more open to buying their product before word of mouth gets around saying that EA is now charging micro-transactions for the ability to press the fuckin' A button.
Keep your wits about you, this may sound like sensationalist dramatization but don't forget, this is EA we're dealing with.
The chancellor of crap, the kaiser of kack, the sultan of shit, the duke of dookie, the prince of poo, and all other insulting poo-ruler terms you can think of.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

Their frequent free games giveaway on Origin deal is good.

But don't be fooled, their main business practices have not changed. Games are merely a product to them, and they will destroy the very artistic soul of any game in their library if it means they can squeeze another few dollars out of their victims (a.k.a. Customers)

Their handling of Battlefield 4 was atrocious, they knowing sold a buggy game, and blamed gamers for their own failings, refusing to admit fault until the imminent release of the sequel, and their announcement of pretty much holding the most recent lacklustre Sims game to ransom so it either sells well or they'll can the whole series is equally bad (especially since they did the same thing with the Dead Space series, and retired it.)

Battlefront 3 is coming out as an EA game soon, and if there was one game that would make me break my 1 man EA boycott it's Battlefront 3. Thankfully I have enough faith in EA and Dice's incompetence to completely balls up the balance of gameplay and features that it will be just enough of a mess I won't feel put out by not buying it.
I'm thinking a tiny amount of maps, content held back for (at least 4) DLC packs released throughout the following months. Super short (under 5 hours) singleplayer campaign with minimal to no story (or just a rushed non-sensical mess) Multiplayer content locked behind a randomised loot crate system that can only be achieved through grind/microtransactions. Bugs up the wazoo, server connection issues for the first 2 weeks after launch, and some controversy involving an EA exec. saying something offensive during an interview about gamers or the game content.
Yeah, it's going to be terrible, it's going to be classic EA.

 

[Irick]

Thanks you all very much for the information so far.
It seems to boil down to that they are doing better right now but there isn't enough information to see if they have really changed.
I think I'll give EA a probationary trial period here and see how they end up doing under their new CEO.
However, I think it's promising enough for me to renege on my boycott for the time being.

 

[MrHide-Patten]

EA doing good is like Hitler getting the trains to run on time. Sure I can get to my destination without delay, but oh yeah, the destination is full of dead Jews. EA has a LOT of fixing to do before even approaching my good books again personally.

 

[Death_Cometh]

While EA are not doing anything overtly evil at the moment I won't trust them as far as I could throw them and I don't doubt for one second that they will try and gouge every cent out of their consumer if they thought they could. The only reason they don't is because of the backlash they would receive. If they could every game would be $200 then on top you would have pay to win, excessive DLC, no pre-owned games on consoles, every terrible practice from the last decade of gaming if they thought they could.

 

[asdfen]

I remember I got Battlefield 3 I think on disk. Got home put disk in. Pop up comes up do I want to install orign - I click no. I've never heard of this software I dont want it .... open the disk from my computer click setup - do I want to install origin again ... Now I am getting pissed. I go online look up what is this orign and how to install just Battlefield game without it. Find out that its impossible. Promptly return the game. Never buy anything from EA since.

 

[nevarran]

They are a shitty corporation that cares nothing about games and everything about money.
That's pretty much all about their current business practices.

 

[Dandark]

It's been a good while since I bought a new EA product.
They have done so much crap that I just instantly assume anything they are involved with will be bad. They have been doing some good things lately but still...

Im not going to think of them differently until they manage to get at least two or three major games out without some big controversy. That includes the game actually being playable and having decent content without having to buy tons of crappy DLC packs for it.

 

[Shadow-Phoenix]

I got over my hate for EA about a year or two ago and I do like their refund policy along with their OTH program, I don't mind Origin that much but I'll sure as hell hate Uplay with a passion.

Can't say I buy much from them though I do wish their store prices were cheaper and in pound sterling instead of Euros, maybe throw in a few more sales.

 

[Hairless Mammoth]

There's still time before the new CEO's changes really start to show, if any changes happened at all. But I'm still skeptical of them just from Battlefield 4's buggy launch, Simcity's "totally not DRM" always online requirement, and Sims 4's lack of features basic to the previous games. We'll see if they can get out of any of the holes they've dug from those blatant anti-consumer SNAFUs.

On the plus side, I hear mostly positive things about Origin's customer service and I have yet to run into a game myself on Steam that requires Origin to play, unlike Ubisoft's trickery. And, they got over that "cheapening IPs" phase really fast. So at least if there ever is an EA PC game that interests me, I won't hesitate as much to give the service a shot.

I'm still glad that Ubi, Activision, and EA don't have anything that interests me, as they are the biggest 3 publishers out there right now, and that regrettably means they often forget that customers are people, not resources they can strip mine to depletion. I will rue the day Activision jumps into the ring with Valve, EA and Ubi and becomes the next publisher to hide all of it's games behind its own DRM/store client.