Why EA sucks

[perihelion]

This site will count the ways:

http://sites.google.com/site/electronicartsucks/whyeasucks

[ElPresidente]

I certainly agree that their DRM choices can be dubious and sometimes customer service isn't the best but the majority of those complaints are aimed at the EA of years past or are representative of the practices of any software developer planning on surviving for more than a year without investors chasing them for their money back.

I think people underestimate how big a risk game development is. Last year alone it felt like every second studio was closing down. Companies like EA will jump on money making franchises like Madden and Battlefield because the profits they make off these games are what allows them to take risks on new games in development in the hopes of finding the next big thing (such as The Sims).

EA over the past year has actually been doing fairly well in terms of supporting quality game development and not just sequel churning.

If there is a game publisher who should have the ire of a community turned upon them it is Activision. This is a company that is publicly stating it has no intentions of supporting any games that don't have franchise opportunities. This what the EA of old was like but Activision is doing much more damage in homogonising the industry.

[Axe Gaijin]

Pffft, of course EA is still Evil, ElPresidente, just play a NFS game to remind you :D

[ElPresidente]

But what happened to that franchise over time is the result of the EA of old. With Shift EA took a very very bold move and gave the title to newcomer Slightly Mad Studios. This is a notable choice in that the developer has a significant number of ex-staff from hardcore PC racing sim developer SimBin (GT: Legends, RACE, GTR, etc).

This isn't the kind of choice EA would have made in their bad old days.

I'm not saying EA are perfect but they are a much better company than they once were.

I should point out at this stage that I'm a hardcore Ultima fan since I was a little boy. So more than most people I have some very very good reasons to be 'gamer angry' about EA a company that not only singlehandedly killed off my favourite game series of all time but ensured that its last two installments would either be rubbish (Ultima VIII: Pagan) or was simply so rushed that the developers couldn't even implement their original plan for the story and had to release a product so buggy it was unplayable on release (Ultima IX: Ascension).

But that was all the EA of old. I find EA of today similar to 2K Games and THQ in recent years.

[ElPresidente]

Of course you can speak freely. We engage in free discussion here. :)

EA develop more than The Sims you know and are more than just one single development team. EA's development arm is massive and is made up of lots of studios of which Maxis is but one. :)

Not to seem like I'm a shill for EA or anything but I also don't buy the CAW argument. I didn't like The Sims 3 as much as The Sims 2 on release but it is hardly below acceptable.

Of course everyone is entitled to their own opinion but most people's EA complaints these days are focused around one franchise rather than looking at the whole of the publisher's operations.

[DevonNoel1]

EA bought a MMORPG that I use to play. It was made by a "small" company that was big on making the game a great experience. EA after taking it over changed the whole way the game played. It was changed into a WoW. They killed the game. Once 9000 people would play it, and now its barely at 2000. I tried to play it again for a few months, but the soul of the game is gone :*( Also, customer experiance sucks now...

[ElPresidente]

Wouldn't happen if only because developers are the ones that draw loyalty not publishers.

When was the last time you expressed interest in an artist simply because they are now with EMI (for example).

Games are the same.

EA has a fan following but only on those franchises they developed internally.

No one is an EA fan because they published Mass Effect, instead they were fans of Bioware, the people who actually 'made' the game.

Publishers will work to secure franchise loyalty but rarely to secure brand loyalty (at least not with customers, they are more interested in their top level brand from the perspective of developers).

[Sacred Nym]

ElPresidente, the problem is that developers are forced to work in the publisher's schedule, else the publisher could opt to simply not publish the game. Look at TS2's EPs. They're all typically about 6 months apart from each other. This is an exceedingly short time for development of anything, but I'm willing that it happened because impatient EA wanted its cash cow NAO. The result? 8 Expansions, an exceeding amount, which are horribly buggy upon release, and some (AL, notably) remain horribly buggy even after patch releases are ceased. If this were to come from nearly any other company, they wouldn't be in business very long. Give some space and the pack count could've easily been shrunk by combining them. NL and OFB complement each other nicely, for example.

Now, you mentioned Mass Effect. This is one glorious exception to this standard only because the development of the 360 version, the only version that was supposed to exist before EA stepped in, was already done and it was into the testing phase when EA bought out BioWare. Of what they've made since, I haven't heard much about specifically, probably because it just got lumped into the rest of the EA garbage as far as "news" was concerned. I'll do some research on BioWare's more recent stuff, but my hopes aren't high, even as a fan of BioWare's stuff prior to the buy out.

[christmas fear]

i personally don't believe that a thread like this belongs on this website. this is not a place to bash the company that made the game.. the game which is the entire reason this website exists in the first place.

[simSOS]

i personally don't believe that a thread like this belongs on this website. this is not a place to bash the company that made the game.. the game which is the entire reason this website exists in the first place.
Yes but it's EA's decisions that fail to make the game live up to maybe higher potential than it currently has. The way that EA goes about things is certainly not the way it should be, especially for a game so great and popular like The Sims. Nearly every game that EA touches turns into an overrated mess. :\

I'm in Australia and it's impossible here to get support from EA. It's so expensive and they put you on hold for a ridiculous amount of time. Once you're on, you don't even get someone from Australia (Not that there's anything wrong with that) and the line quality is horrible...

EA Support should be toll free if we bought the game and are in need of support - not $2 a minute. That's ridiculous.

DRM's... Don't even get me started :lol:

[christmas fear]

i never said i don't agree about those decisions.. however, i just don't feel like it should be discussed here. when i looked at the topic title, it just seemed so out of place. this is practically supposed to be like a fansite, which it is. it's for fans, support, and content all relating to the game.

and then you go trash talking about the company. how dare you discuss this here? :o

[HystericalParoxysm]

christmas_fear, this thread is fine here. Nobody's saying that EA is a bunch of puppy-eating Nazi fucks - they're discussing business practices and employee issues. Which is fine. The title is a little inflammatory but the actual thread is fine. They're a huge company, not a person with actual speshul snowflaek feelings - criticism is just fine.

[tedw]

i never said i don't agree about those decisions.. however, i just don't feel like it should be discussed here. when i looked at the topic title, it just seemed so out of place. this is practically supposed to be like a fansite, which it is. it's for fans, support, and content all relating to the game.

and then you go trash talking about the company. how dare you discuss this here? :o

Isn't the reason the site is made up of fans one of the best excuses for why a thread like this should be allowed to exist? These are people who play the game, who spend time following it and modding it and talking about it; they're more "deserving" of being able to criticize than people who have never played the game and have no direct opinion on how EA is handling the franchise.

More importantly, though, is that being a fan should never mean having to treat the producers of what you are consuming/watching/playing/reading like everything they do is perfect.

[kennyinbmore]

I'm not EAs biggest fan by any stretch, but I do find it funny that probably 99.9% of the people complaining about the company will still run out and buy every Sims ep they put out no matter what the content is. If I had a dollar for every post on this site that goes " I don't like the idea of the ep but I'll probably still buy it" I'd own EA

[ElPresidente]

ElPresidente, the problem is that developers are forced to work in the publisher's schedule, else the publisher could opt to simply not publish the game. Look at TS2's EPs. They're all typically about 6 months apart from each other. This is an exceedingly short time for development of anything, but I'm willing that it happened because impatient EA wanted its cash cow NAO. The result? 8 Expansions, an exceeding amount, which are horribly buggy upon release, and some (AL, notably) remain horribly buggy even after patch releases are ceased. If this were to come from nearly any other company, they wouldn't be in business very long. Give some space and the pack count could've easily been shrunk by combining them. NL and OFB complement each other nicely, for example.

That is the same with all publishers, not just EA. I'll never support a publisher rushing a title but to hate EA especially for it is a bit perverse. I deal with pre-release code on a daily basis. You have no idea how painful it can be to HAVE to play unfinished product. But EA is no more guilty of this than any large publisher. It doesn't make it okay but EA shouldn't be singled out for it.

Now, you mentioned Mass Effect. This is one glorious exception to this standard only because the development of the 360 version, the only version that was supposed to exist before EA stepped in, was already done and it was into the testing phase when EA bought out BioWare. Of what they've made since, I haven't heard much about specifically, probably because it just got lumped into the rest of the EA garbage as far as "news" was concerned. I'll do some research on BioWare's more recent stuff, but my hopes aren't high, even as a fan of BioWare's stuff prior to the buy out.

Mass Effect 2 is superior to the original in every way and was developed entirely during EA's control of the developer.

And Mass Effect is not the only glorious exception. Take a look at some of EA's best recent titles they have published:

Dragon Age (personally gave this a 9/10 late last year for PC Powerplay)
Bad Company 2
Mirror's Edge
Left 4 Dead 2 (granted Valve operate almost entirely autonomously)
Fifa 10
Madden 10
Dead Space
Skate
Crysis

The point I'm making is that EA of today is not EA of yesteryear. EA take a lot of risks on games these days they never used to. To be honest the only publisher these days that operates in a manner that should universally anger gamers is Activision.

Go read up on Bobby Kotick. Lovely bloke... no... really... the guy is. ;)

[midnightmonkey28]

Of coarse EA sucks! They are a money hungry, evil corperation that milks you for every penny you've got. They rush their games and they're full of bugs, my games has had countless crashes and my computer is a $2000 dollar gaming machine (you can even see indside of it). Let's take the store for example, they overcharge us for stuff that could have been included in the game for free, there was even stuff in the store on release date that could have easily been incuded in the base game. :rolleyes:

On the positive side The Sims 3: Ambitions does sound pretty awsome. :)

[ElPresidente]

Activision rush games more than EA do.

Microtransactions and DLC are being used by all publishers today.

Out of those people who hate EA? How many play a significant number of games from a variety of different publishers? I can promise you that you get more bugs out of Ubisoft products at the moment. One need only look at Silent Hunter 5 and Assassin's Creed 2 on PC. Big issues abound with those products.

EA is the same company that saved Tim Schafer's Brutal Legend (an extremely risky proposition given the poor commercial success of Schafer's last title; Psychonauts) when it was dumped by Activision at the 11th hour.

Again I'm no shill for EA (many of fav franchises are not EA franchises) but all of the opinions bagging it have been based on performance in the past (it is well known throughout the games industry that EA has undergone a significant cultural change in the past few years - this is not the same company that bought and gutted Origin) or after a poor experience with one specific title or franchise. That's for legitimate complaints and then all others out side of that is something all publishers are guilty of. It is like hating a specific crow because its feathers are black when ALL crows feathers are black. :)