Topic: Why Do People Hate EA?

[MysterD]

Original IGN Article
IGN -> They asks Peter Moore (COO of EA) why people actually hate EA.

Responses to above said IGN article
CinemaBlend -> Why People Hate EA? Ten Simple Reasons
Destructoid -> Jimquisition - "Why Do People Hate EA?"

[gpw11]

Okay, fuck this.  I don't really like or hate EA at all anymore than I'd like or hate any other publisher, but some of these reasons are really stupid.

"Forced Multiplayer".  Waaah. MP In ME3 was fun and kind of unique in how it was tied into the single player. You didn't have to play it to beat the game, I'm 99% sure you didn't have to play it to get the best ending, and complaining that it was tacked on is stupid.  As is complaining that the SP would have been better without the MP being there.  No shit, I'm sure the SP of Left4dead would have been better if they didn't put resources towards multiplayer...but they did and that's the game they made.  If you don't like MP, don't touch it.

"Too many games"  DICE managed to breathe some form of distinction into Battlefield 3, but a lot of the Battlefields between Battlefield 2 and Battlefield 3 were hit or miss.  A.) that's bullshit.  B.) People buy a game, they make another one. If it's a profitable series, they'll probably dedicate more resources towards cashing in on them.  You might as well complain that Ford is releasing yearly models of the f-series but only really offers a completely new revision every 4-5 years.

"Massive Expenses With Small Profits"  Unless you're a shareholder or a stakeholder of any sort, why would you give a fuck?  Because games cost $60?  Psssst.  Profitable companies charge the same.

The rest are probably somewhat legit.  Except for anything Jim Sterling says.  A.) he's an annoying idiot, B.) His comparison of EA to Valve was dumb and off point, and C.) he's too fat to take seriously.  And I'm dead serious about that.  Like, you're morbidly obese, it's going to kill you (it is), and you somehow think that tackling whatever hot button topic is going on in the video game industry is more important and pressing than going and getting a gym pass, some running shoes, and/or your stomach stapled.   I mean, if you were trying to tackle a topic that actually mattered, sure, but you're not and something in your decision and thought process obviously just isn't working.  It's all I can think about when I listen to you.

Note that this doesn't apply to George R. R. Martin.  God bless that man, he is doing the important job of bettering our world one word at a time.  But really, I'm not entirely joking here. He also hates fan fiction, which I applaud.

[Xessive]

There are a few things I hate about EA, primarily related to regional restrictions, pricing schemes, and access rights (including but not limited to DLC). These issues are not exclusive to EA, but EA notoriously exceeds at them.

A dysfunctional Origin online store in the Middle East (website does not function properly), accessing the Origin store through the Origin application works occasionally but to our surprise things that normally go for $50 USD are sold at a nonequivalent 50 Euros (~$63 USD). I guess that would be a problem if Origin would even accept my credit card but it doesn't since it's not tied to a bank that's based in North America or Europe, even though it is a MasterCard.

My issues with EA primarily to legally buy things from them. Instead I have to purchase from other outlets and add them to Origin. If all else fails pirating something that is not available in my region doesn't seem to carry any guilt.

[K-man]

Peter Moore looks like such a smug son of a bitch.

[idolminds]

I think a lot of it is "haters gonna hate". There are some legitimate reasons to not like EA or like some of their business practices but people are searching out any reason to hate them even more than that. I just don't get it.

And I agree with gpw, some of those reasons are stupid.

1.) Forced Multiplayer For Broader Appeal - This is an industry-wide problem
2.) Rehashing IPs To Cash-In - Another industry-wide problem
3.) Massive Expenses With Small Profits - I'm not a shareholder so who cares?
4.) Overblown Marketing - Certainly not limited to EA.
5.) Buying Out Studios And Gutting Them - Holy shit, the first real complaint!
6.) Origin Two Year Entitlement Clause - They changed this already. Hell, the article even tells you this! So why are you still bitching about it?
7.) Origin Forum Bans Result In Bans From All Your Purchased Games - Yeah that was dumb. I think this policy has also changed.
8.) Early Server Shutdowns - Another pure actual complaint!
9.) Online Passes - Pretty much every game now has something like this, some sort of one time use code in new copies.
10.) Day-One DLC - Pretty much every game now has day one DLC. Where have you been?

[idolminds]

Here is a good example of "haters gonna hate". Story breaks today on a court case about a Tetris clone. The company that made the clone lost. I'll make a thread so we can talk about that, but I noticed these in the comments:

OH wow... As shocking as this is. This is actually a good thing.

This'll make game follow the artists rule of changing a minimal 35% of the origonal into something new before its no longer considered plagiarizing.

EA is screwed.

Well, now we have the arduous task of making sure EA hears nothing of this case...

Maybe my memory is fading, but does EA have some long-standing history of creating clones of other peoples games that I'm not aware of? Sequels to their own franchises don't count as plagiarizing.

[MysterD]

Okay, fuck this.  I don't really like or hate EA at all anymore than I'd like or hate any other publisher, but some of these reasons are really stupid.

"Forced Multiplayer".  Waaah. MP In ME3 was fun and kind of unique in how it was tied into the single player. You didn't have to play it to beat the game, I'm 99% sure you didn't have to play it to get the best ending, and complaining that it was tacked on is stupid.  As is complaining that the SP would have been better without the MP being there.  No shit, I'm sure the SP of Left4dead would have been better if they didn't put resources towards multiplayer...but they did and that's the game they made.  If you don't like MP, don't touch it.

Actually, for ME3, to get the BEST ending, you do...
[DO NOT READ the SPOILERS and DO NOT click the Link unless you finished ME3 already]

(click to show/hide)

With a high Military Rating of 5000+, you take the "Red" path (Destruction) - then you will get the best ending:
Shepard kills the Reapers; squad-mates live; and Shepard lives.
See here for details.

EDIT:

5.) Buying Out Studios And Gutting Them - Holy shit, the first real complaint!

EA are NOT the only ones to do this!

There have been numerous studios w/ other publishers, who wound up also closed. We all seen what happened to Troika and the makers of Blur, right? They were w/ Activision.
I think Activision's much worse than EA on most of this stuff - NO CONTEST.

Honestly, I think gamers just need to be more patient w/ games. There's very few incentives these days for buying Day 1. If you can, avoid Day 1 purchases. Unless the game is something you'll play or replay for LOTS and LOTS of hours (think 20+ hours), don't do it! There will be patches, eventually - to put the game in a better state! Price-drops are so frequent on base games not too long after its release and there's so many Ultimate Edition re-releases much later, you just might as well wait it out, if you can - this is especially true in the PC gaming side and especially w/ the digital distribution side.

[gpw11]

Actually, for ME3, to get the BEST ending, you do...
[DO NOT READ the SPOILERS and DO NOT click the Link unless you finished ME3 already]

(click to show/hide)

With a high Military Rating of 5000+, you take the "Red" path (Destruction) - then you will get the best ending:
Shepard kills the Reapers; squad-mates live; and Shepard lives.
See here for details.

(click to show/hide)

I was under the impression that you'd still be able to reach that high of a Military Rating level with your default (non-mp boosted) Galactic Readiness score, but it would be a bitch to do so. At least that was the line when I was playing the game at launch

And I totally agree with both of you, there are valid reasons to dislike EA, but people seem to look for more and more justification for it and I have no idea why (groupthink?). They also seem to kind of gloss over that most other major publishers/studios do pretty much the same thing.  And that they do the same thing because the market more or less dictates that they do.  In Jim Sterling's rant, he commented how EA stated that they were going to change a few years ago.  But he neglects to mention that they, for all intensive purposes tried. Mirror's Edge was new and different and people didn't buy it.  Brutal Legend was a risk that didn't pan out. They answered the call of fans with Alice: Madness Returns, and I don't think that really worked for them.  If I was to take a guess, I'd say that they're more reactive to the trends of the industry rather than ruining the industry as a whole. The thing is, guys like Jim Sterling won't accept that because they don't understand that for 90% of the people who buy and play games, it's just a light hobby rather than a lifestyle. Sure, we all play games and probably focus on them more than a lot of people, but I get the impression from people like Sterling that they really look at the industry as something more than it really is.

OH wow... As shocking as this is. This is actually a good thing.

This'll make game follow the artists rule of changing a minimal 35% of the origonal into something new before its no longer considered plagiarizing.

EA is screwed.

One of the more stupid quotes I've ever read. I mean, apart from the fact that this is an obvious arts student, which mean that the entire statement is wrong in a lot of ways, how the fuck does this imaginary "artists rule" explain still life or  AAARGH.  That person sucks balls. 

[MysterD]

(click to show/hide)

I was under the impression that you'd still be able to reach that high of a Military Rating level with your default (non-mp boosted) Galactic Readiness score, but it would be a bitch to do so. At least that was the line when I was playing the game at launch

And I totally agree with both of you, there are valid reasons to dislike EA, but people seem to look for more and more justification for it and I have no idea why (groupthink?). They also seem to kind of gloss over that most other major publishers/studios do pretty much the same thing.  And that they do the same thing because the market more or less dictates that they do.  In Jim Sterling's rant, he commented how EA stated that they were going to change a few years ago.  But he neglects to mention that they, for all intensive purposes tried. Mirror's Edge was new and different and people didn't buy it.  Brutal Legend was a risk that didn't pan out. They answered the call of fans with Alice: Madness Returns, and I don't think that really worked for them.  If I was to take a guess, I'd say that they're more reactive to the trends of the industry rather than ruining the industry as a whole. The thing is, guys like Jim Sterling won't accept that because they don't understand that for 90% of the people who buy and play games, it's just a light hobby rather than a lifestyle. Sure, we all play games and probably focus on them more than a lot of people, but I get the impression from people like Sterling that they really look at the industry as something more than it really is.

I agree w/ a lot of the complaints about EA - but, let's be real, like you said: these SAME complaints can go to just about EVERY damn Triple-A publisher out there - i.e. THQ; Capcom; and 2K, just for starters. I can go on and on w/ examples of this madness. I'll just do a few of them. EA seems to be the "whipping boy" of the industry b/c they've tried and experimented w/ inventing some of these new trends or are actually following trends other invented.

Deep Silver - DLC locked-out on the disc w/ Risen 2; 2K Games - some MP DLC locked-out on the disc w/ Bioshock 2;
Mafia 2's 1st Major DLC looks reskinned and was part of the original game but removed at last minute;
Capcom - We all know about them locking-out DLC on the disc in SF x Tekken and Dragon's Dogma.
 
Steam pretty much invented the "my games requires my client-platform thing to run." All EA did was copy that for their own Origin titles, after seeing how successful Steam was. Only thing is - most 3rd party games on Origin, you don't need Origin to actually run and play the game; Steam isn't like that in most cases for 3rd party games.

Steam pretty much got the ball rolling for "Online activation" required for games w/ HL2.
Bioshock 1 PC from 2K got the "online activation required w/ limited installs and allowed Revokes" ball rolling that EA and numerous others have copied.

Crazy amounts of DLC for your game - EA and BioWare kind of pioneered that with Dragon Age: Origins, I think (9 DLC's in total, if I recall). Actually, then again - I think BioWare w/ NWN series was the first to do DLC, with their onslaught of NWN Premium Mods. Though, there's tons of DLC sold for many of Bethesda's games (Oblivion and Fallout 3); Fallout: New Vegas (6 DLC's in total -> 4 major contents DLC's + 2 weapon packs). Let's not even look at the amount of DLC for DOW2: Retribution from Relic - okay, so there's 18 DLC's in total in the DOW2:Retribution Complete DLC Pack. We'll end it there; I could keep going on and on on DLC...

I just think gamers should just re-read my final paragraph in Reply #6, if they are frustrated w/ like a lot of the annoying trends, so they can learn how to buy games and shop more wisely. IMHO, I think if you get 20 hours total or more out of a $40-60 game on a game you buy on Day 1, you're doing alright - doesn't matter if it's on one playthrough or multiple. I'm sure many gamers are still replaying the shit out of games like Diablo 2 and got more than their $'s worth.