Jimquisition: EA & Ubisoft: A Cycle of Perpetration and Apology

Ipsen

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teamcharlie said:
Ipsen said:
teamcharlie said:
I would prefer not?to see that dog again. Nothing wrong with your dog specifically (okay, the visible teeth and the barking really don?t help). But I?m afraid of them.

For me, this video felt like a retread of old ideas (companies apologizing for shitty behavior to the public without actually stopping is not exactly a new phenomenon), but I guess there are probably viewers who somehow expected that EA and Ubi et al. love them and would never lie and for whom this video is be a revelation.

So, uh, keep up the good work? Keep spinning out largely the same points every year for the people who are too lazy to look through the backlog of this show, who are also probably the people who most need to be told that big companies lie? Kinda depressing really.
It bugs me (and discredits yourself) that you find the lies of businesses so commonplace or obvious.
Um, discredits me as what exactly? As a longtime viewer of Jim?s show? As an observer of things? I can tell you right now that I have seen nearly every episode of the Jimquisition and I have observed many a thing throughout my life.

Also, businesses. Walmart acting friendly and happy while gouging its workers and employing/buying from sweatshops to keep prices down. Oil cartels making up oil crises to keep gas prices high. Deregulated power companies in California lying about power supply issues and the causes of brownouts to keep prices high. Hucksters selling ?revitalizing tonics? made of heroin, lead, goat urine and radium before things like the FDA began regulating how much people can lie about what their products put in your body. Businesses have been lying since there were businesses, and it doesn?t surprise me that big video game companies are also businesses.
And the part where you do something about your observations comes in where?

All well and good, Observer of Things (I know you're being somewhat serious here, but that made me giggle), but if you're aware of issues and not doing anything about them (not to mention taking jabs at others while doing so), I can't look at you any better...than some random Escapist user, of course.

In any case, I've come to see the Jimquisition largely as videos not for us, as in people who are normally aware of pigshit in the gaming industry. It's for everyone else who may be ignorant to the fact (though perhaps its placement on this site and the comments in its thread are a bit...self-serving?).

That's also to say that myself and many others are not doing much to solve the issue either. We can swear off Ubisoft and EA product, but that's only a bit better than slackivism, I guess. Solving an issue like holding large game companies accountable this takes actual sacrifice, of time, effort, money, etc. of those who care. I don't see that coming out of many on the internet (anonymity can make that difficult to see) but at the least Jim is farther ahead for his effort.
 

Elyxard

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The solution to a vast majority of their problems is to give all of their developers another year of dev time, but they're clearly not going to do that with The Sims 4 launching without a number of basic staples of the franchise. I've lost track on how many times EA has had to apologize over the last couple years, and they're clearly not going to stop anytime soon.
 

Flowstone

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I'd make some grand statement about boycotting Ubisoft, but in all honestly it would be meaningless. On a whim, I looked at a list of every single game ever released by Ubisoft, and came to the conclusion that I had never in my entire life bought a single Ubisoft game for myself. I picked up Riven back in 1998, but that was a present for my mother. The only Ubisoft game I've even PLAYED was Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, and that was at a friend's place; never picked up a copy myself.

It's not really a matter of taking a stand; they just don't make the sort of games I enjoy playing.
 

Nix33

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The more I delve into the bowels of the gaming industry, the more I am convinced that the PR for most of these companies is handled by some unholy fusion of Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Donald Trump, and a turnip. For shit's sake, I am a student of literary theory and I could do a better job of not shitting on gamers.

Call me mad, but I feel as if something pretty fucking major needs to happen in order for practices like these to stop, i.e. people need to stop buying their games.
 

Steve2911

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As others have pointed out I'm 100% on board with the episode, but I have to disagree just a tad on the Diablo situation. Blizzard genuinely fucked up, they knew they genuinely fucked up and they went well above and beyond to rectify the issue for free. And they haven't really fucked up in any comparable way since or before then.

Can't really say fairer than that.
 

ron1n

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100% agree with you on this one Jim.

HOWEVER, one aspect of this cycle that I think you neglected to mention is the media's role.

Every time publishers release one of these bs apologies, it's almost always in the form of a press statement, neutral 'interview' or community announcement and is reported as a passive news piece. It's so rare to ever see a gaming journalist actually take them to task and call them out for the rubbish they are trying to peddle (obviously excluding Jim and a handful of others).

Instead of pouncing on these comments, the articles come across like PR pieces. Can you imagine if political journos were this hamstrung? Yes the forums and comment sections will still point out the obvious and rage against the machine, but I wish more sites would follow up, ask questions and actually take up the cause of the consumer whom they are supposedly in touch with.


p.s +100 points griffon door for doge inclusion =)
 

gamegod25

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Jul 10, 2008
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To quote Agent K from MIB, "A person is smart, people are dumb panicky animals"

The problem is that while many of us gamers and those close to the industry have gotten wise to their bullshit there are still millions of people who let them get away with it either because they are indeed stupid, let fanboyism blind them, or just plain don't care for whatever reason. And even if we know better that doesn't mean we can't still get suckered in by false promises and apologies. These companies only care about pure profit, once someone hands money over for their packaged goods (because that's all games are to them) they don't care what happens after that, they got their money so fuck off. It's only when enough people complain that it starts to noticeably hurt their sales figures/PR image that they pretend to have learned thee error of their ways and feign good will toward their consumers.

I'm mad at the industry for turning something that was just about having fun and making people happy into a soulless machine that tries to milk its consumers dry and treats them like shit. I'm mad at people for letting them get away with it as much as they still do. And I'm mad at myself for being just as guilty for feeding this cycle bullshit in the past and even now if only in some small way just by being a gamer. All we can do is keep informed, keep a lookout for bullshit, and spread the word to warn others when it rears its smelly head.
 

blackdwarf

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I am not familiar with most issues of the battlefields games or other series that were use as examples, so I don't know if there were fixes or, of they were, how they were handled. I would like to say that Diablo 3 did eventually fixed its issue and that Reaper of Souls is an amazing expansion. I agree that their apology on the auction house was really weak, because messing up that a big a feature shows that the development had issues. But I am also glad that they turned around on a lot of the lesser game design, especially considering there are on the fourth (third?) game-director now since development began.

But the current state of affairs are sad indeed. The thing I find frustrating is that now it is hard to find the difference in genuine apologies and forced fake ones for the sake of PR.
 

teebeeohh

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owbu said:
the diablo 3 comment seems slightly weird in the context of the rest of the episode (Just saying sorry to boost sales, but not changing anything)
Blizzard removed the auction house and completely remodeled the lootsystem towards what customers wanted, instead of saying sorry and then bringing out RoS with the auction house intact to keep making money with it.


Not sure how much more they can do at the point where they realised their mistake.



I am still waiting for the "sry for the long wait times for our WoW expansions, we will do better!" apology to mean something though^^
i think it fits because they did tell us the game would not work without the auction house and defended the game viciously, even attacking former blizzard designers who pointed out that the auction house was a feature for the boardroom and not for the consumer
 

Evonisia

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Jun 24, 2013
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I felt like saying that this felt like just a filler episode, but two things kept me from complaining about it for more than one sentence:
The return to Jim Sterling's "bad" art, arguably my favourite part of the 2011/2012 episodes.
My fear that that dog was going to leap at the camera. He seemed awfully irritated.
 

Thanatos2k

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uanime5 said:
Thanatos2k said:
Blizzard "admitted" their mistake, and then it took SEVEN MONTHS for them to remove the auction house. Curious, no? Oh wait, they'd just released the console version without the AH which was a better version than the PC because of it. Oh wait, 7 months later is exactly when their expansion came out, wasn't it.

It was never about the auction house, it was about getting you to buy the console version and then to buy their expansion. Did you fall for it?
1) How exactly was the console version better? Are you referring to smart loot because they introduced that on the PC version before they released the console version.

2) Why would anyone buy the console version when they could play the PC version and chose not use the auction house?

3) Blizzard closed the auction house before the expansion came out because they didn't want people to sell expansion items on the auction house.

4) Why would anyone buy the console version of a game they already had? If they wanted to start from level 0 with no items they could have simply made a new character.
1. No always online DRM.

2. Because the console version didn't have always online DRM, a feature Blizzard claimed was impossible to implement. Another blatant bald faced lie.

3. Why did it take 7 months again? Again - SEVEN. MONTHS. All they had to do was flip a switch and block everyone from clicking the button. Or go a little further and revoke all outstanding auctions and return the items to their owners. Not complicated at all. But they didn't do that - because it made them money.

4. Because it was better than the PC version at that time for reasons previously mentioned. They got their money from the PC people so they didn't care about them - UNTIL, that is, they needed to sell them something again (the expansion). Then suddenly having the game destroying auction house feature would have made them less money so they removed it.

They admitted their mistake and then kept on doing what they were doing. They completely deserve to be talked about with Ubisoft and EA.

By the way, they might not even be patching future editions on the console:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/13272817274?page=3#57

How pathetic is that!?
 
Sep 24, 2008
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owbu said:
the diablo 3 comment seems slightly weird in the context of the rest of the episode (Just saying sorry to boost sales, but not changing anything)
Blizzard removed the auction house and completely remodeled the lootsystem towards what customers wanted, instead of saying sorry and then bringing out RoS with the auction house intact to keep making money with it.


Not sure how much more they can do at the point where they realised their mistake.



I am still waiting for the "sry for the long wait times for our WoW expansions, we will do better!" apology to mean something though^^
Yeah, Jim just mentioned Diablo 3 Auction house as something that Diablo 3 should apologize for. The real thing I feel they need to apologize for and change (but they won't) is the always online system.

They sat there and called us all cheats because some people cheated. They said we all stole the game while I can really look at my CD copy of Diablo 2 right now. And that online was the only thing preventing it from happening again. And that today internet is so common that everyone should have a good connection. But their own servers are a lot of the problems, and one just needs to head over to google, type "Diablo 3 I've been hacked" to see the benefits of The Protection of Always Online [https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=diablo+3+I've+been+hacked].

EA and Ubisoft seem to be full of people who have nothing but the utmost of disdain for their customers. Mistrusting and railing against us while demanding we understand they if we weren't so shit, they wouldn't have to protect us from ourselves. And when they FAIL to 'protect us', they don't change and still say it's for our own good.
 

DragonDai

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You got one thing wrong, Jim. In fact, I think it's probably the only thing you've ever gotten wrong (that I can remember anyway). We ARE that stupid. Right at the end, you say we aren't, but we are. Otherwise these companies would have gone out of business LONG ago. But they are thriving. And that means people continue to buy the games these companies produce, which means people ARE that stupid. It's really that simple.

Also, you're dog is the second cutest dog ever (right after mine). He looks like a pretty fantastic little buddy.
 

Catrixa

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May 21, 2011
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I'm just tired of all the hype for these games that either come out broken or inferior to what was promised. A million years ago, when Watch_Dogs was announced as a game that would exist, I was really excited. But, as more cycles of terrible game -> apologies for terrible game happened, I sort of lost my urge to play it. And, as it turns out, Watch_Dogs became a game that I probably wouldn't have really gotten into anyway (they made hacking seem so much more interesting in that trailer...). I've gotten to the point where, unless it's a franchise that I've liked and doesn't have too many stupid features (always online DRM and tiny, non customizable maps in Sim City, for example), or hasn't been completely ruined by previous games (for me), I'll probably wait for it to come out, get some kind of decent review (or lengthy gameplay demonstration), and be mostly confirmed enjoyable (by me) before I touch it.

I mean, I like getting super hyped for something, dragging it home in the middle of the night, and playing it until the sun comes up. I'm just tired of the disappointment at this point.
 

Grimh

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Oh here we go again with Jim spouting nonsense as fact. Making wildly inaccurate claims he can't possibly know are true.
I'll have you know, I'm totally a collossal stupid idiot, and I won't have you spreading lies stating otherwise!

The other stuff was very spot on though.
 

BeerTent

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May 8, 2011
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ObsidianJones said:
They sat there and called us all cheats because some people cheated. They said we all stole the game while I can really look at my CD copy of Diablo 2 right now. And that online was the only thing preventing it from happening again. And that today internet is so common that everyone should have a good connection. But their own servers are a lot of the problems, and one just needs to head over to google, type "Diablo 3 I've been hacked" to see the benefits of The Protection of Always Online [https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=diablo+3+I've+been+hacked].

EA and Ubisoft seem to be full of people who have nothing but the utmost of disdain for their customers. Mistrusting and railing against us while demanding we understand they if we weren't so shit, they wouldn't have to protect us from ourselves. And when they FAIL to 'protect us', they don't change and still say it's for our own good.
Just for shits, I followed that link. And I took a look on the forums. I'll agree with you, and I have to add this...

Is an Authenticator what I think it is? How fucking pathetic is it that you need an authenticator to play goddamn blizzard games? The part that blows me away is that the community turns on the victims, "[...]because he doesn't have an authenticator and he blames Blizzard. This community man, this community."

If you ask me, the fact that your system is so goddamn fragile that you need an authenticator, THAT's what needs to be addressed.
 

Korzack

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Apr 28, 2010
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Jimquisition: now with dog. Glorious beast :D

On topic, though... Ahm... My honest thinking? A snivelling apology now is nothing more than marketing to them, now. "Yeah, our old stuff was awful, we totally wouldn't do that again... By the way, have you pre-ordered our new bucket of turds & got the season pass?" The only way these companies will realise is if people stopped giving them the money for their turd buckets.
Heh, captcha message "get out". Oddly appropriate. Either that, or the escapist is fed up of me. One of the two