Slashdot Mirror
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."
B, b, but where are the people going to get their next NFL football game?
Not to rain on your parade, but the vast majority of people don't care. Joe consumer is too busy with the trivial details of his own life to care about business practices of a corporation that doesn't effect him, especially a video game publisher. On top of that, the casual gamer that play sports games doesn't care where their new football game comes from. As long as it has new stats, plays as well as the last iteration, and maybe has some fancier graphics he'll be happy. I think the only hope to see the death of EA is that their own arrogance will get the best of them.
But aside from my hopeless skeptism, I'm with ya. Fight the power!
-Shawn "If the Name Don't Rhyme It Ain't Mine" Conn
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.
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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.
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