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

[MrFalconfly]

I'm just going to say a few names:

Bullfrog
Pandemic
Westwood
......
Bioware

That is all.

*bursts into tears*
Command and Conquer was my childhood, and EA shat all over it back in 2010. At least CnC3/KW was pretty good.

The only one responsible for Westwoods fall is Westwood.

THey were performing poorly to say the least (they were trying to launch three projects, MMO's and FPS's, that got nowhere, essentially turning them into a moneysink that broke deadlines) not to mention the fact that one of the most popular C&C games (Red Alert 2) wasn't made by Westwood.

People were also complaining that the C&C games were too much alike (same gameplay and such) and that got to EA who then followed the wishes of those people and completely redesigned the gameplay (making C&C 4). So yes C&C 4 was a response to the people saying that the previous C&C games hadn't evolved enough.

And personally I don't hate EA but I do find some of their business practices annoying (resulting in me basically not buying their games unless they're absolutely stellar).

 

[BeeGeenie]

According to me, this part is the key:

As companies go, EA is not as cuddly and nice as, say Valve. But then, Valve isn't publicly traded. Valve isn't owned by banks.

That's the problem right there. EA isn't owned by people who are passionate about the medium of videogames. The people who keep that business afloat probably haven't touched a videogame in their life. And for a business that's engaged in a creative industry that is dangerous.

Of course I understand that thanks to those unaffiliated people we get increased budgets. But that doesn't change the problem that the people who ultimately rule over EA just don't get the industry and it's customers.

I don't think that companies should be there and inherently exist to "just make more money", I don't think that's a healthy way of conducting business and there should be company values, business ethics and morals to uphold.

And I don't think having those would drive them bankrupt or anything of the likes, just have to look at other companies like Valve and CDProjekt and they've seemed to manage fine so far without employing business practices that piss of a large part of consumers and without gouging either, not to talk about smaller development studios or indies.

That's exactly why I hate shareholders. They just want to make more money. They have no other interest in the company. And they ultimately decide the course of business, because what are you going to do without investors when you're a public company?

I honestly I have no doubt that the majority of EA's actual employees are passionate about videogames. But they're not on top of the food chain, and that's an issue.

Very true, but this is because big corporations forget that Customers are more important than Shareholders. The company won't make money unless the Customers are happy. Happy customers = happy shareholders. Unhappy Customers = EA driving itself into the ground and ruining even more games while it tries desperately to squeeze more money out of fewer and fewer consumers until it collapses... or gets a gov't bailout... and then collapses.

 

[ThriKreen]

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.

Or maybe it was due to someone hijacking an ad that ran on the Origin service? We never did see what the cause of the thing was. The whole report could have been faked just to drag EA's rep in the mud some more.

We've already seen evidence of people faking that already (case in point, how the said petition came about in the first place).

Or that guy complaining that Origin was scanning his financial records, and it turns out Origin was scanning for any hacks in C:\Program Files\ and his files happened to be in the same folder.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Very true, but this is because big corporations forget that Customers are more important than Shareholders. The company won't make money unless the Customers are happy. Happy customers = happy shareholders. Unhappy Customers = EA driving itself into the ground and ruining even more games while it tries desperately to squeeze more money out of fewer and fewer consumers until it collapses... or gets a gov't bailout... and then collapses.

Well, they won't get a government bailout (not enough pull in Washington), but the gist of your point is solid.

There's this growing mentality in the business world that goes "Hate your customers, but love their money."

And it works just fine when things are functional; the stupid consumer masses rarely notice anything is amiss until something breaks.

But the more obvious this relationship becomes, the less people trust companies. To the point where the rational reasons for hating a business are far outweighed by irrational reasons.

Case in point, the article that brought us here.

In the IGN article, the author does his best to flat-out marginalize the complaints as "A vocal minority".
And this begs the question: If the complaints don't stem from a significant proportion of EA's market, (or even gaming as a whole), then why address it so broadly?
Hell, why address it at all if it's just a tiny minority who make complaints?

 

[ThriKreen]

In the IGN article, the author does his best to flat-out marginalize the complaints as "A vocal minority".
And this begs the question: If the complaints don't stem from a significant proportion of EA's market, (or even gaming as a whole), then why address it so broadly?
Hell, why address it at all if it's just a tiny minority who make complaints?

Because that tiny minority engages in blowing news out of proportion and some even go so far as to fabricating evidence to support lies and a lot of other conspiracy theories.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Because that tiny minority engages in blowing news out of proportion and some even go so far as to fabricating evidence to support lies and a lot of other conspiracy theories.

So they do. And yet, some of us still don't bother getting our news from huge mainstream sources like FOX and CNN for the same reasons.

Heavy bias exists even in "Accredited sources". The shit pot stirs both ways.

 

[Antonio Torrente]

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.

I don't know, as far as I'm concerned Bioware is already indoctrinated with the EA corruption so they are already a lost cause and that includes the Mass Effect series.

Alright then. You bring the gasoline, I'll bring the flamethrower then.

before it lays eggs.

Just two questions, how much? and what else can I bring?

A cistern will do. Bring marshmallows.

Oh yeah, let's bring it on!

 

[aestu]

Pure propaganda. IGN is a corporate BS machine.

Why do people hate EA? People hate EA because they suck.

They treat their employees like toilet paper, they make horrible games, they destroy good franchises and never build decent new ones. They gouge their customers by charging for stuff that should be included with package and treat honest gamers like crooks by banning them for circumventing their own bugs and the general public like fools by BSing them with "Dear Leader"-type propaganda like the nonsense in that article.

Good enough reasons for ya?

 

[wintercoat]

Pure propaganda. IGN is a corporate BS machine.

Why do people hate EA? People hate EA because they suck.

They treat their employees like toilet paper, they make horrible games, they destroy good franchises and never build decent new ones. They gouge their customers by charging for stuff that should be included with package and treat honest gamers like crooks by banning them for circumventing their own bugs and the general public like fools by BSing them with "Dear Leader"-type propaganda like the nonsense in that article.

Good enough reasons for ya?

...I knew I remembered your name from somewhere! The avatar cements it! God, I haven't been on the Wowhead forums in forever...

 

[KarlMonster]

I really don't like IGN, I mean, they are owned by the same people that owns FOX.

This article also reminded me a lot of something that I would hear on FOX news...
EDIT: It'd also be nice to know if the entire article is a quote from the guy, or if it is author speculation...
If it's a quote, then we're right, EA is owned by dicks
If it's author speculation, then he is terrible at his job.

Hear! Hear! Well spoken, Bruce! Because...

OK, that stuff in the first post, was that the *entire* article?

Because if that is the entire article, then it is worse than most of the IGN game reviews.
"I wanted to talk about this with Peter Moore ... and he was big enough to tackle the uncomfortable question head-on." Except they didn't talk about it, he's only got 2 quotes from Moore, and in one of them he dismisses the entire issue as the sentiment of a fringe minority. That is not talking about an issue.

I want to say that I can treat EA fairly. But I'm currently playing Need For Speed World. The developers seem to spend all their time coding the virtual cars, and none at all improving the client software. There appears to be no movement at ALL on the issue of security/account hacking. Not to mention that the in game global chat has been non-functional for... is it two months now?

I couldn't make this stuff up.

 

[ThriKreen]

Sorry, but it's sufficiently difficult for me to trust EA over the word of this random stranger's virus report. That's how bad their situation is: they don't earn the benefit of the doubt any more. If it's fake, then the burden of proof is on them (and subsequently, you, since you're the one suggesting the possibility of it being fake) to prove otherwise. Do you have any evidence to support the notion that this virus report was faked for malicious purposes?

I am skeptical in that only one report was ever brought up. You'd think there would be more incidents being reported about it. I doubt it's an intentional fake for malicious purposes, but again, we've already seen people online doing exactly that so that is still on the table. Unfortunately we have no context on what the guy was doing - I don't recall seeing ads in Origin, however he could have had a web browser up in-game and that's how it was hijacked.

I'm more inclined to believe it was an in-line ad that was hijacked somehow (as well as being easy to deploy to all browsers, not just Origin), than EA deliberately faking petition signatures with a bot net. There's really no benefit for them to do so - EA didn't make the petition, it was AllOut.org who was going to delivery the list to EA ... but EA was already on their side, soooo... why pad a petition to give to themselves?

Not to mention the rather obvious fakeness of the names, even an EA PR would recognize blatant astroturfing is a Bad Idea. We still have no idea who the culprit was, it could have very well been the anti-gay groups that were trying to undermine the legitimacy of the petition.

Which brings it back to my main point: You'd notice that I'm trying to see it from all angles. Yet many people here are no longer thinking and being skeptical when it comes to "EA is doing Bad Things": their default tinfoil hat conspiracy state is to blindly believe and attribute everything as "EA is Evil" and stop looking for evidence, or worse, casually dismiss any contrary evidence.

That state of thinking and myopic viewpoint says more about you than it does about EA.

 

[Jay Knowles]

I used to have a lot of respect for EA. when I'd boot up a game and the EA logo came up with the 'challenge everything' quote I'd get super excited, I'm not sure if EA was genuinely better a decade ago, or if I've become jaded, but I've made my peace that I'll never play another EA title as long as they are primarily about making money, not great games.

it's the difference between "we want to make great games and to do that we need money" and "we want to make a lot of money and to do that we need to sell games"

seriously, EA can go mind it's own business in its corner of the internet, and I'll go mind mine... on steam...

 

[Scrustle]

I want to say that I can treat EA fairly. But I'm currently playing Need For Speed World. The developers seem to spend all their time coding the virtual cars, and none at all improving the client software. There appears to be no movement at ALL on the issue of security/account hacking. Not to mention that the in game global chat has been non-functional for... is it two months now?

I couldn't make this stuff up.

I was wondering why no-one was talking on that game for so long. But it's not really a surprise there's so many issues. Black Box are incompetent, or they're just being overworked by EA. They're probably already well in to working on the next NFS game, despite the fact they have shown over and over they aren't able to create a quality product for ages now.

 

[xDarc]

I believe the gaming world would be better off without Activision and EA, maybe not bigger or more profitable, but certainly better off in the long-term.

I agree. It would also please me to know that I contributed to their demise in some small way by sticking to not buying their games. Ultimately this is the end result of all the chatter about these companies, we want them to go away. I don't people talk about this part of it as much because they can't even imagine it. But that's the goal, put EA out of business and try to support someone better rising to take it's place.

 

[Dryk]

No. No, I don't think you understand. The average gamer does not enjoy getting nickel and dimed. They do not enjoy you preventing them from playing the games they PAID for. They do not enjoy watching you buy developers and drive them into the ground so you can buy another one.

"Gamers enjoy all these wonderful features"
"Sorry to have to break it to you, but gamers enjoy the games in spite of those features, not because of them"

 

[ThePenguinKnight]

If I were anybody from IGN I'd just shut my mouth. It's bad enough that they can't even review a game correctly let alone piece together an argument.

 

[ATRAYA]

I.G.N. should be asking, "Why do people hate I.G.N.?"

Since you'd have to have your brain slogging its mashed remains out your nostril to NOT be able to see why E.A. sucks, I.G.N. should probably focus on why THEY suck instead - if only to better themselves.

 

[Murmillos]

Now you do bring up a fair point of "why is there only one report", but your idea of "maybe it was an ad" runs contrary to that, since there's no way that an ad hijacked only ONE person on the entire internet to that website. So in order to keep pursuing the notion of "why is there only one report", you'll have to admit that the ad idea is extremely unlikely at best.

I dont' know what we are talking about, but I think I should point this out; but yes, you can force a single user (tho mostly set up to be random) to a specific different website instead of the normal website everybody else still goes too.
http://www.wired.com/business/2012/04/ff_abtesting/

 

[Jumpingbean3]

I find it funny how he states that EA was voted the worst company in America because of nerd rage over the Mass Effect 3 ending, while in fact EA was voted the worst company in America BEFORE Mass Effect 3 was released.

Because there was no nerdrage going on over ME3 before ME3 was released...

He meant the nerdrage over the ending not the game in general.

 

[Jumpingbean3]

Why do people hate EA? Oh where to start...

Oh and if you're going to ask someone why they hate Electronic Arts ANYONE would be better than Electronic Arts.

So in my mind I can safely conclude the person who wrote this is an idiot, a shill or both.

Well it is IGN.