Electronic Arts Facing Possible Class Action Lawsuit

As a follow-up to yesterday's story about a frustrated EA employee's spouse, several readers wrote in to report that EA is now facing a possible class action lawsuit from disgruntled employees. Besides the Gamespot coverage, Kotaku has a discussion of it as well. To add to the "frustrated EA worker" momentum, a former employee named Joe Straitiff has posted about his experiences as well. From his post: "So I'm posting under my real name -- you have to stand up to this type of thing or it will continue. And every company will become EA so that can compete... Remember, you can't spell ExploitAtion without EA."

Comments

Three words...

[BJZQ8]

FORM A UNION It worked for GM workers who faced similar situations back in 1937. Stick together and they can't stop you...but then again, in this world where everybody is out for themselves, you've probably screwed.

Bye bye to the jobs

[lukeduff]

I'm sure a lot of talented Eastern European, Indian, and Chinese developers wouldn't mind being exploited by EA.

Yeah.

[Renraku]

While I don't have much against a free market, this is clearly abuse. We take skilled workers, and treat them like shit. People that are great programmers, talented minds, etc. We run them through the dirt and then don't even have the common courtesy to give them overtime.

My father is a construction worker. 5 or 6 years ago, his company started pulling the same thing. He would go in at 8am, and not get home until 10pm or 11pm each night. Sometimes on Saturdays. They did, however, get overtime.

A month of this went by. People were tired. They were cranky. Accidents happened at work all the time, usually involving equipment damage or damage to whatever they were working on. They just didn't get much done in a 14 hour day.

Thankfully, the management saw what was going on and when that job was completed later that month, everyone was given a big bonus, an apology, and promises that they weren't going to set their 'completion dates' that low again.

It was depressing to watch my dad come in, after a 12 or 14 hour day, eat, shower, and go to bed, knowing that in a few hours, he'd have to be right back at work for another 12 to 14 hours. It was barely worth it in my opinion, even with overtime.

EA's shit should be a warning to other companies of what not to do.

Re:just quit

[Garse Janacek]

People are quitting, that's not the point. If you'd read the story yesterday and this one, you'd know that EA has absurdly high turnover rates. The problem isn't that people can't quit, it's that EA keeps bringing in new people by lying to them, and then running them into the ground.

The problem isn't (just) that EA was unfair to a lot of people in the past, it's that it continues to lie and manipulate new people into the same trap -- because as long as people ship a title before quitting, what does EA care? There are always more people who want to work there.

What EA is doing is illegal, and they are pursuing it as a deliberate and continuing policy. This isn't just a couple employees who are upset because they had a bad experience and want to win money with a lawsuit, and individual employees quitting won't change things, since that is already factored into EA's strategy.