So IGN decided to ask "why do people hate EA"

[Bigeyez]

You suggested that people hate EA because people just hate for the sake of hating (really? Haters going to Hate?). I offered proof that it isn't an isolated, or minority, opinion and in fact has detrimental affects to EAs business.

Also consider that Sony and MS offer products outside of games. Sony is a MASSIVE hardware company with a tiny fraction of its efforts going into games. Microsoft is the worlds leading Software company for PCs and owns one of the big Console contenders of this and last generation.

The fact MS and Sony are still massively successful up to this point sort of accentuates the issues here.

EA is a game publisher, with the brains of a magpie and the Charisma of a rock.

Yes I do in fact think that a lot of people on the internet hate things because it's the cool thing to do. Hence the hate for anything thats mainstream or very popular. Halo, Call of Duty, Madden, etc.

You offered proof that the company's stocks went down. So what? It's not like investors are going "MUHAHAHAHA WE HATE THAT EVIL EA CORP!!!!!".

And yes sorry us folks on the internet are indeed the MINORITY of gamers. While very vocal, our opinion is a drop in the bucket compared to how many gamers there are worldwide. Notice how successful all those Boycott Game X!! things work out? Most gamers don't care what companies like EA do. They just want the games they want.

Also I don't get what you are saying by stating that MS and Sony are still massively successful.. EA isn't??? Just because a company's stocks go down doesn't mean the company isn't successful. They still rake in more money then some countries and will sell millions of games this year. How is that not successful?

Edit: And I'm not trying to argue here. I just find it silly that IGN puts up that post and theres all this backlash about it. It just matters so little that seeing people so worked up about it is funny to me. /shrug

 

[Rariow]

EA kills companies. Good, creative, intelligent, non-douchey companies. BioWare games are slowly becoming EA-ized ("The awesome button"). Bullfrog just plain died. And so on.

EA refuses to take in good business practices. I'm sorry, Day 1 DLC is simply not something that should happen. ESPECIALLY when half of it is on your disk to begin with. Jim Sterling's been blowing that horn long enough that I don't need to elaborate. Origin is just an abomination. It has no reason to exist. Whilst installing Steam to play one certain game was painful, it had long-run benefits. I recently bought Saints Row 2 there for practically pocket change, and I'm having tons of fun with it. This isn't the first time such a thing has happened. I had to install Origin to play Mass Effect 3. All the games are 50+ dollars. Nope, thanks.

EA has no creativity whatsoever. All of their new IP since the fertile years (Mirror's Edge and such) has been either brought in by BioWare (And now that Mass Effect is done and Dragon Age is soon to become stale/EA-ized, even that's not great) or has been bought in a cheap attempt to cash off an old franchise a la Syndicate.

Honestly, I could keep going like that forever. But all the arguments I can make have already been made. Despite my extreme irritation at EA (I can't say I "hate" it. You can't hate a whole company.), it's not going to go away as much as I point out the stuff that's wrong with it. It's not going to suddenly change and stop choking the last cent out of our wallets. We'll just have to live with it, and hope no more good companies get absorbed by this giant.

 

[Ragsnstitches]

Also I don't get what you are saying by stating that MS and Sony are still massively successful.. EA isn't??? Just because a company's stocks go down doesn't mean the company isn't successful. They still rake in more money then some countries and will sell millions of games this year. How is that not successful?

Edit: And I'm not trying to argue here. I just find it silly that IGN puts up that post and theres all this backlash about it. It just matters so little that seeing people so worked up about it is funny to me. /shrug

MS and Sony have safety nets which allow them to take (relatively) more risks. These risks can stimulate growth and make business more lucrative. Currently we aren't seeing that (going by last E3), but this really depends on what they offer for the next generation. Time will tell on that front. EA does not, and their venture into Origin has only opened more wounds and alleviated no pressure.

The stocks in a publicly traded company are pretty big indicators of a companies success. When you look at the figures I posted earlier we see that the value of shares is cut in half in the last 6 months.

You can read that as the Value of the company being halved in just half a year. That is significant and pretty indicative of how successful EA is.

Sales are only one side of the whole thing... EA is haemorrhaging money, making cuts across the board and, as evident by this article and a dozen other PR facepalms, blaming others for their own failings. It is in full blown survival mode, irrational PR and all.

They are flailing desperately for a life raft at this point, and if things keep going the way they are now, this could shatter EA as we know them. There are a lot of core IPs been released this year, their success/failure this time around is likely tied to the jobs of MANY people as well as the future of said IPs.

EDIT: From where I stand, EA is just shy of THQ horrendous fall...

...they are dangling at a precipice and waving there arms desperately to regain balance.

 

[Pb Zeppelin]

Wow. I never realized there was this much IGN hate. I read their site on a regular basis because I like the fact that they're more of a news site opposed to a blog. Every website has a poorly written editorial every once in a while, and while this is one of them, it does raise some good points. I don't believe the intention of the article was to get people to stop hating EA, it was more to get them to think about things from a different perspective instead of blindly hating something on the internet.

I would also like to point out that Fox generally keeps all of its divisions' intentions separate from each other. Fox News may be dumb, but Fox has also funded The Simpsons, Alien, Star Wars, Avatar, etc. If you went to see Prometheus last weekend, guess who's pockets you're lining with money. I'm not saying its right, but its damn near impossible to avoid Murdoch's influence.

 

[Eddie the head]

I kind of don't hate them. The may not be the best but they are not the worst I mean at least they are better then Activision. Witch isn't saying much but hay.

How is Activision worse? Activision may be quite bad, but they are NOT as bad as EA. None of Activision's big franchises have day one DLC, or online passes or shit like that. Yet EA's games have all of those, and they are generally more scummy.

Mostly it's just an option. I don't much care for Day one DLC but I can just not get it if I don't want it. Online passes I don't like them but I can see why they do them, I wish they didn't but in the end they are in it for money. But mostly I don't care for Activision because a lot of there games just tend to be there. You could make an argument that that shitty businesses practices are worse then stagnation and you might be right, and like I said they are not the best at this but they are not the worst. And if we just mean company's in general Bank of america stole $100 form me once, and made a few people I know pay there mortgage twice in a month a few times so yeah.

 

[Setch Dreskar]

All I have to say is Ultima Series EA, you bastards brutalized it, you destroyed pandemic, mythic and several other companies to feed your money machines, you constantly harass your customers and claim its their fault, you go out of your way to insult other companies who are more relevant and make better products then you, you start fights and make poor PR decisions to try and increase sales, you butchered Mass Effect 3's ending (Though as was revealed it was Casey Hudson's fault specifically).

In essence, EA has been a terrible company for awhile, its just now we are getting tired of putting up with their practices, I will take solace in the knowledge that EA's reputation is going further downhill and their stocks are following it.

 

[Ziame]

You know what if EA went bankrupt and goes under, it's gonna be pretty cathartic when it does happen and we laugh and celebrate at its demise.

Although I will feel sorry for the people that will lose their jobs in the process if this ever happens.

yeah and they will hold all the cool IPs in their dead hands, like Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Mirror's Edge, Dead Space... really great moment.

At least they are dead right? right?

sigh.........now you made me depressed.

They can die after they let all those things go.

Read about Interplay (iirc) holding rights to FreeSpace even though it has no interest in it. Just because.

Being the greedy fucks that they are they will hold on to those franchises to their corporate grave.

Oh wait I forgot I only cared about Mass Effect and that's over. So, let them die. Or let them live. I don't care.

 

[Someone Depressing]

IGN are a bunch of sad-sacks who get payed to praise shit like Halo and Mass Effect, and then complain about decent games, calling them terrible. Deadly Premonition was 100x better than Alan Wake, by far.

Now, about this article, I don't hate AE. I just think that they simply cannot handle dlc, and some other stuff, but I don't really hate them. Project $10, or any other crappy DLC they've released that should've been on the game in the first place, I hate. But, not them directly.

 

[T_ConX]

Why is EA a terrible company? I'll tell you why.

After SWTOR came under attack from religious conservative over the issue of gay marriages in the game, a website called AllOut started a petition to show their support for EA.

EA, of course, decided the best way to react to this was to submit thousands of bot generated signatures. How? By having PCs that were running Origin submit them automatically.

That's right. EA turned your computer into a spam bot so it could give itself a big pat on the back.

Also, that whole ME3 kerfuffle.

 

[Naeras]

The phrase "EA isn't as cuddly and nice as, say, Valve" was the first time my warning lights started going off with that article. If it was rephrased "EA has far more horrible business practices than, say, Valve", it would be better.
The rest of the article looks like it's "game companies need to make money" as an excuse for why EA are being bad. Which, obviously, doesn't make sense at all.

People hate EA because they're a company with horrible practices. There story over.

 

[Emiscary]

Thanks for the link, helps illustrate the reality dismissive internet douches are happy to ignore.

And honestly, it amazes me that EA is betting against gamers holding a grudge. They really must not know anything about us >.>

I'm dismissive because I think there are more important things out there...

Like badgering people for complaining about those things on the internet, for instance?

"Yo dawg I heard..."

Etc.

 

[worldruler8]

Why is EA a terrible company? I'll tell you why.

After SWTOR came under attack from religious conservative over the issue of gay marriages in the game, a website called AllOut started a petition to show their support for EA.

EA, of course, decided the best way to react to this was to submit thousands of bot generated signatures. How? By having PCs that were running Origin submit them automatically.

That's right. EA turned your computer into a spam bot so it could give itself a big pat on the back.

Also, that whole ME3 kerfuffle.

You're...you're kidding right? Isn't that, like, illegal? I mean, it probably was in the Terms and Agreements that no one reads, but really, isn't that illegal? Now I know why that EA download manager always made my computer's anti-virus go haywire.

OP: I gave them the benefit of the doubt on the beginning of the article. That changed when I realized they never talked to the people who hate EA, rather they talked to EA themselves. I always liked the tagline "you can't spell ignorance without IGN", but this is ridiculous.

 

[IWCAS]

Because they're a greedy, dickhead of a company? Isn't that common knowledge?

And now IGN is turning their heads the other way when they decide to show their common greedy face. Great job IGN. Keep taking lessons from EA on how to piss people off; they're experts.

 

[Bigeyez]

Thanks for the link, helps illustrate the reality dismissive internet douches are happy to ignore.

And honestly, it amazes me that EA is betting against gamers holding a grudge. They really must not know anything about us >.>

I'm dismissive because I think there are more important things out there...

Like badgering people for complaining about those things on the internet, for instance?

"Yo dawg I heard..."

Etc.

I didn't badger anyone. I simply posted my opinion. YOU quoted (correction) someone who quoted ME and then called me a dismissive internet douche. God forbid someone posts a differing opinion on the internet without being called a douche.

 

[IWCAS]

Why is EA a terrible company? I'll tell you why.

After SWTOR came under attack from religious conservative over the issue of gay marriages in the game, a website called AllOut started a petition to show their support for EA.

EA, of course, decided the best way to react to this was to submit thousands of bot generated signatures. How? By having PCs that were running Origin submit them automatically.

That's right. EA turned your computer into a spam bot so it could give itself a big pat on the back.

Also, that whole ME3 kerfuffle.

No way... Please tell me you're one of those crazy people that think the govt. watches us sleep at night.

 

[Waaghpowa]

IGN is ignorant, hypocritical and is constantly sucking corporate dick. Most of their articles are laughably misinformed and bias and it bewilders me that anyone visits their site.

 

[80Maxwell08]

Why is EA a terrible company? I'll tell you why.

After SWTOR came under attack from religious conservative over the issue of gay marriages in the game, a website called AllOut started a petition to show their support for EA.

EA, of course, decided the best way to react to this was to submit thousands of bot generated signatures. How? By having PCs that were running Origin submit them automatically.

That's right. EA turned your computer into a spam bot so it could give itself a big pat on the back.

Also, that whole ME3 kerfuffle.

No way... Please tell me you're one of those crazy people that think the govt. watches us sleep at night.

Oh that's not even the best part of that story. The names on the petition are pure gold. Such gems like Roland from Poland, Olivia from Bolivia, Chad from Chad and Fred from Fred. Also a bunch of the signatures' comments are exactly the same when posted within seconds of each other. Then you get names that don't fit the country at all like Peter from Saudi Arabia and Rick from Pakistan. Here's the link to the examples given.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.365863-EA-is-at-it-again#14269604

 

[BoogityBoogityMan]

The real reason people hate EA is that they use the 'make crap game, hype the shit out of it'. It is a manipulative practice that leaves customers feeling burned. It is especially egregious because they manipulate the media (through H-U-G-E ad budgets), and forums through social marketers. IMO, this practice is the #1 reason the AAA market is in severe decline. Everyone I know has been burned multiple times on pre-orders and now almost never pre-order. Also, hype no longer works.

EA has burned out the market.

 

[IWCAS]

Why is EA a terrible company? I'll tell you why.

After SWTOR came under attack from religious conservative over the issue of gay marriages in the game, a website called AllOut started a petition to show their support for EA.

EA, of course, decided the best way to react to this was to submit thousands of bot generated signatures. How? By having PCs that were running Origin submit them automatically.

That's right. EA turned your computer into a spam bot so it could give itself a big pat on the back.

Also, that whole ME3 kerfuffle.

No way... Please tell me you're one of those crazy people that think the govt. watches us sleep at night.

Oh that's not even the best part of that story. The names on the petition are pure gold. Such gems like Roland from Poland, Olivia from Bolivia, Chad from Chad and Fred from Fred. Also a bunch of the signatures' comments are exactly the same when posted within seconds of each other. Then you get names that don't fit the country at all like Peter from Saudi Arabia and Rick from Pakistan. Here's the link to the examples given.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.365863-EA-is-at-it-again#14269604

I'm really not sure how they got away with that.

Shitheads.