EA fails at everything
Hope you did read my other article about Red Alert 3. Well, things don't stop there. This had to be on the Dark Sector. Yes...it's that bad.
Don't know exactly where to start this...but here it goes.
Electronic Arts is definitely the Microsoft of the gaming world. I can’t stand them and I refuse to buy their games because they truly do not care about their employees or customers.
The last thing I acquired from them was Red Alert 3. Look at my article about that game at the reviews section to see my point.
Many people are probably wondering why should we hate EA and stop buying their games. It's very simple and will be outlined in the following points. Here are some reasons why we should boycott and punish EA.
1. They ruined Command and Conquer series.
Command and Conquer 3: A dozen patches, failed balance, failed gameplay, failed online play, failed patches, failed forums. Now C&C 4 wants to remove resource management and base construction. Thank the Force they stop at 4.
2. They ruined Sim City.
Electronic Arts bought Maxis back in 1997, acquiring the rights to the Sim City franchise. Ever since that moment, Sim City has sucked.
What once was one of the best strategic simulation games was turned into a dumbed down game with Sim City 4. Then it was remade into a game that just plain sucks with Sim Societies.
3. They resell the same sports game to us year after year.
Madden 06, 07, 08, 09 NBA Live 06, 07, 08 09, etc. They sell us the same game every year with slight modifications and updated rosters.
The gameplay for Madden has not really changed in years, and as a result the sales of Madden are starting to drop off. The same thing can be said for all of the EA Sports games.
We have not truly seen and mind-blowing innovation with these games for over 9 years. Why in the world buy them ?
4. They killed Red Alert series.
Check my article about it if you didn't already.
5. They assimilate or eliminate game companies and ruin their games to give them a monopoly.
About ten years ago, there was Westwood. They detected something that they could not compete against and they assimilated them and then Westwood was disassembled and games such as Command & Conquer were destroyed in sequels made by EA. Now instead of a strategy (RA2), we have cartoon network spam wars (RA3).
In 2004, ESPN NFL2k5 hit store shelves at $29.99. Not only was it lower priced than Madden, it was a better game.
Threatened by this, EA came throwing cash at the NFL and NBA for exclusive rights to make games based on those leagues. Now we are stuck with Madden with no chance of other companies to grow their own better NFL or NBA games.
Luckily another company got the MLB licensing. MLB08: The Show and Major League Baseball 2K8 are really good games. Much better than the MVP line of games were.
In relatively recent bid to buy out Take-Two Interactive EA stated they were after Grand Theft Auto and that the sports games they would acquire would not cause a monopoly because they were games like Hot Shots Golf to keep them in check.
Hot Shots Golf unfortunately is one system only (PS3), and EA has the upper hand on Xbox360 and Wii.
6. Their technical support sucks.
Have a problem with your EA game, whether it's not working, your CD key isn't usable or any other problem good luck trying to get support. I once had a problem accessing the EA forums, so I e-mailed support. I got back a default e-mail saying that they are sorry for my trouble with the product. WTF ? What product ? I was trying to access their forum ! After having no answer for a few days I allowed myself in.
But have you ever had problems getting your EA game to work ? Sure you did. Try speaking English to their support team. Better yet, try understanding them.
Even if it’s something as simple as a problem with a CD key, you probably won’t be successful in getting EA Tech Support to help you at all.
They sounded like Klingons that just learned Japanese and started to practice it with me on the phone.
If you call, now they only tell you to reinstall your game, even if you did that ten times already.
If that doesn’t work they tell you to get new drivers for one of your multimedia devices, even if you initially told them you have the latest ones on all your components.
7. They do not support their games and when they do it usually makes things worse.
Examples: C&C3, RA3. EA's policy is basically to put out a few updates for a given game and then do nothing else.
Several older EA games are impossible to find updates for and many newer ones updates are never released for simple problems and even when updates are released they often cause more problems than before.
An example was Battlefield 2142 where at least one update caused the blue screen of death when installed and applied to the game.
Another is C&C 3 where each balance patch caused a bigger balance disaster.
And yet another with Red Alert 3, where they caused additional bugs too to be added to the failed balance and phuxed-up support powers tree.
8. They treat their employees poorly.
Back in 2004, EA settled a lawsuit with its employees over unpaid overtime. The suit, filed in 2004 stemmed from employees allegations that they were required to work long hours and weekends with no overtime compensation.
EA has made billions and billions of dollars from their failed games and yet they avoid rewarding their employees with the money legally owed to them for overtime.
I’m sure for EA employees, this is just a needle in a haystack regarding employee/employer relations.
9. They totally fail to manage most of their web pages and forums.
Here I have plenty of evidence too.
When EA sells a certain game, then they make a blueish-looking web site to go along with it. After they have taken all your cash, they have no interest in supporting you anymore and they let the web sites go without maintenance or support.
When they made C&C 3, probably the game sucked so hard that the forums were over-filled with unhappy users.
The forums kept crashing and crashing with 100-line java errors. Instead of fixing this, they closed the forum and relocated all C&C fans by force to a new php-java forum (the one I was telling you about at 6).
Another example of this is the Sim Theme Park page. It’s been titled Untitled Document at the top for years. You can’t find a patch for the original Sim City anywhere and if you’re still into the last good version of Sim City which is Sim City 3000, good luck finding any support or patches for that.
They also shut down The Sims Online, which sucked but many people bought the game and might still want to play.
It would cost EA virtually nothing to still provide information and patches for these games, but they choose not to. Want add-on’s or patches for your game that’s 7 years old ? Phuck you !
We already have your money ! You have been mind-tricked into getting those games and you deserve nothing since you did that.
A 3rd example is the C&C page. They have that somewhat good thing called Battlecast Primetime there. It's a TV circus show. The problem is that the episode count sucked.
At first, they did count them. then they didn't, then they spawned special episodes and then they count some again. There's no easy way to get a specific episode...or a specific game patch for that matter.
A. They killed GTA.
Yes, they killed GTA too. GTA 4 was the champion of bugs in all EA's games. Boats on land, trucks rotating at 500rpm, rotating choppers with standing blades, flying through textures and dozens more.
At least it was something fun to watch. I invite you to youtube to watch them too. They're worth the time...more then playing the actual game, anyway.
B. They sometimes make quite stupid decisions.
Throughout their time as a game publisher EA has made some highly bad decisions. Some include shutting down the online portions of demos after only a month after game release even though some people might decide to try out the demo after the game release.
Another one is in some newer EA games they have actually begun charging people Microsoft Points or money for cheats. Also forcing people to use EA servers instead of the integrated solutions offered by Sony or Microsoft and forcing them to sign up for EA accounts instead of fully integrating with Xbox Live or the PlayStation Network as every other game publisher does (even Activision, the second largest game publisher fully integrates) just shows how much of a monopoly EA is creating and their need for control over everything.
C. Their anti-piracy system fails.
They made games require disks, then they made SecuROM (read the respective article). Everything failed.
The first issue is it's based on SecuROM which has been shown to cause problems with disk drives, and Windows itself (as my SecuROM article explains) and expose systems to dangerous security holes.
Second is that only 3 or 5 activations are included. While 5 activations may seem like a lot, a single hardware upgrade can cause the DRM system to think it's a new computer and the system will use up another activation or a simple reformat and re-install of Windows will cost another activation.
Third, when the game is ten years old will EA have DRM servers up for the game when you want to reinstall the game, more then probably not, so then you're stuck with an unplayable game.
And finally, Spore with it's very advanced protection is among the most pirated games ever, if not the most. Any single copy of Spore can only can only be installed three times, ever. Even when it is installed, it needs to contact EA via internet at least every ten days or else the game will refuse to run.
A lot of users have not been enthusiastic. Amazon 'accidently' deleted all those user reviews. So far over 2000 reviews have punished the game.
At least they're starting to admit they are wrong, although nothing else is happening.
"The command and conquer model doesn't work," Riccitiello told industry experts at a summit.
"If you think you're going to buy a developer and put your name on the label... you're making a profound mistake."
EA bought up Bullfrog, made famous for games like Theme Hospital and Populous, in 1995 after head-honcho Peter Molyneux left.
Unfortunately, a lot of the talent fled from the company after EA acquired the developer - much of it following Molyneux to Lionhead Studios in 1997, which was later bought out by Microsoft.
Riccitiello said that the problem occurred with other companies, including Command and Conquer developer, Westwood, and that it was probably because EA tried to enforce a management structure on companies which were used to more creative freedoms.
"When I talked to the creators that populated these companies at the time, they felt like they were buried and stifled," Riccitiello said.
So, what does this mean for the recently acquired BioWare and Pandemic Studios? Not a lot, hopefully. Riccitiello has promised that EA is working very hard to keep the company culture alive in those studios - but what do you think ? I think they will fail.
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Foot in the mouth for EA
EA failed at everything. Or even more exact: there's nothing that they made not to be a fail.
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