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EA Looking to Increase Stake in UbiSoft
Despite recent claims from EA that their intentions were benign, Reuters has the story today that EA may expand their investment in Ubisoft and could seek a seat on the board. From the article: "EA is now Ubisoft's largest shareholder and has 20.88 percent of its voting rights. But the Guillemot brothers, the French company's founders who together own 17.5 percent, still control 22.8 percent of the voting rights."
I would like to declare a preemptive moratorium on jokes involving "French" and "surrender".
thx
The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
How far is EA going to go to piss people off? The just can't get enough bad press can they? However, the real problem is "how long are people going to act like consumers instead of activists?" Now going to one extreme or the other is always bad, you have to find a balance...but I am tired of seeing people act like mindless cattle. If EA treats it workers, customers, and compitition poorly, people need to boycott. We may not own any stocks in the company, but we can control a little bit of their cash flow. If people would take a stand and make it unprofitable to act like this then they wouldn't. Do you really want to only have the choice of Sony, EA, Microsoft, or Nintendo for your games? Competition drives innovation, and the less companies there are the less competition there is. Please people, I beg you to take a stand for once against these monolithic corporations!
</rant>
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
By becoming a publicly traded company, the founders of Ubisoft created the possibility of having control of their company taken away from them.
They may now be rich from running a successful videogame publisher and selling stock in it. But now they get to experience the joy of watching someone they hate come along and systematically dismantle something they put a great deal of time and effort into making a success.
If they can sleep comfortably on their large piles of money with that notion, then more power to them.
But if they dont like what is happening, then they should kick them selves for permitting this to come about.
END COMMUNICATION
" Please mod this troll down. I am French and I find it offensive. I don't laugh at you Americans because of Vietnam and North Korea so shut up about the World War II because American civilians have NEVER experienced such hell as we had here. Thank you."
I am an American, and I agree with you. If the dumbasses in my own country don't watch it, the whole world's gonna be gunning for us. Just because the French actually used their brains and realized we were only going to Iraq for oil, everyone here freaked out and started throwing out their wine and naming french fries "freedom fries" even though their not even really from France orginally!
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
Splinter Cell: Post Season?
Don't blame me, I voted for Durga.
This may amount to bad press, but for bad press to matter, the consumers that drive the sales would need to actually give a damn.
Now, in order to give much of a damn about EA's competition practices, labour relations, or other general bad behaviour, you have to be one of the following.
1) a follower of the goings on in the videogame industry
2) an employee within the game industry.
3) a direct relative or friend of someone who qualifies on item 2
4) a Labour activist.
5) a member of the gaming Media.
Now, the number of people who fall under those categories is quite small. Granted, members of those categories are screaming their heads off to anyone who will listen.
But the bulk of EA's sales come from the following.
1) Casual gamers.
2) Parents of casual gamers.
EA being a miserable company does not show up as even a blip on the radar of someone who cannot tell you the difference between EA and Blizzard. It does not affect their ability to do their jobs, raise their children, or search for their Pornography, or address their day to day moral concerns.
So if you want consumers to give a damn about EA being run by assholes, you need to give the disintrested consumers a much better reason then the disapperance in choice between companies they have never heard of.
END COMMUNICATION
You find it offensive that someone wants everyone to stop making jokes about the French and surrendering? Do you know what a moratorium is? It's a suspension of activity. While you're learning new words, try this one: kneejerk.
I have not been impressed with EA at all recently, as a games company. Despite thier nfsu series, they are always in the news as a bad company to work for.
I say they are looking at the games industry as a games sweatshop, which is not good for consumers.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Mod - 2 fanatical liberal conspiracy theorist uninformed flamebait.
Laugh it was a joke
Sig
EA: We must not have this.. Max Headroom thing get back on the air! Guillemot: But the kids love him!
Just like the White House is insisting that Iran isn't a major concern...yet.
Anyone else feeling like the victim of a jedi-mindtrick?
"This is not the hostile takeover you're looking."
Insert Sig Here
The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
People will act like consumers as long as they are consumers. If EA is doing something illegally, then I would fully expect the US gov't (and any other gov't involved) to enforce the law. If the EA environment is really as bad as many people claim (and I believe that it is), this will come back to bite EA. You can't treat employess terribly and expect them to stay as long as there are other options. EA might not lose any market share right now over their practices, but they will lose market share when they can't make decent games anymore because current and prospective talented employees take other job offers.
Please mod this troll down. I am French and I find it offensive. I don't laugh at you Americans because of Vietnam and North Korea so shut up about the World War II because American civilians have NEVER experienced such hell as we had here. Thank you.
As an American, I'd laugh at the French because of Vietnam, but that's only history...
... buy them.
To me, the funniest thing about this whole situation is that EA's Montreal studio is made up almost entirely of employees that they poached from Ubisoft a couple of years ago.
They're going to keep at it, it's just what corporations do, you know. Try and make money. A sad world.
I don't not believe there isn't a God.
EA Looking to Increase Stake in UbiSoft
Is this the money kind of stake, or the wooden kind?
I don't buy EA games, good thing, but I don't want good games like splinter cell and far cry to end up in bad places like EA.
Eat sleep die
...they do it after the release of Silent Hunter III, that way I don't have to extend my boycott to this great looking sub sim...
EA sucks. Ask anyone who used to play on Gamestorm...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.