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EA's Open Letter to Ubisoft
Alex Petraglia writes "I'd actually laugh at this if I didn't find it so disturbing. An open letter sent from Alain Tascan, General Manager of EA Montreal, to Joel Tremblay, Ubisoft Montreal, begins as such: 'On behalf of all game makers in Quebec, I urge Ubisoft to stop the illegitimate practice of forcing talented people to sign employment contracts that restrict their creative and economic freedom.' EA came under great scrutiny last year with claims of stifling employee creativity, refusing to pay for overtime, and generally engaging in less-than-savory practices. Additionally, it's widely known that EA currently seeks to gain greater control over Ubi through a hostile takeover."
The pot told the Kettle : "You're black".
"Quit making decent games. You make us look bad."
This is a sig. It is appended to the end of comments I post.
"Since your people are contracted, we can't steal them away to burn them out and abuse them like rented mules. No fair!"
The Blaster Master Fighting for Truth, Justice, and Evil Pie since 1979
Non-Compete clauses are typical in plenty of industries. This is just a bunch of posturing by those jackasses over at EA. Screw them.
My blog
Did this letter get intercepted from the Bizzaro Universe?
I'm a consultant. I work with a group of consultants. They would promote themselves Klingon-style if it meant becoming an employee, with benefits and (relative) job security. What kind of crack is EA smoking?
EA criticizes Ubisoft over their non-competes, when 1) EA has been criticized for something completely different and 2) EA is rumored to be planning a takeover of them. I'm missing where the "I'd actually laugh at this if I didn't find it so disturbing." comes in...
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Ubisoft should reply telling EA to stop running talented people into the ground and putting them off working in the industry
Did you get that thing I sent ya?
Thats what I'm doing! I'm refusing to buy their games until they change their policies!
Oh and also the games don't run on my OpenVMS Alpha. Pagans!
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
I don't see a copy of the letter, ala Smoking Gun.
nothing
I pulled the above from this article:
http://www.nyunews.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/0
I don't know what sort of evil corprate games they are playing, but knowing E.A. they will probably manage to shaft everyone.
Sorry but this is NOT even remotely insightful.
Lets say I was going to buy 1 EA game this year and so were 3 of my friends. If I convince them all night to thats 4 sales lost... now when you consider a big hit like EA sports games they sell thousands or millions. Nothing short of losing a good 1000+ sales will even remotely register with them. I don't have the power to stop that and I doubt most of Slashdot does. So "vote with your wallet" works about as well as "vote for the guy you want". One or two people mean nothing in this day and age, you really can't do much and a small scale boycott won't effect them at all.
I like muppets.
If you're going to be dishonest, do it on the big scale. Do you treat your workers like shit? Deny it, if you don't pretend like it doesn't exist in the first place, but turn around and claim the high road and accuse your competitors of doing it. People are more dazzled by audacity than they are turned off by dishonesty, and so long as the "cha-chings" outnumber the "tisk-tisks", you're golden.
Works elsewhere, as you can imagine. Take that hateful son of a bitch Bill O'Reilly on Fox. The man dumps contempt on absolutely everybody he can, and when it's revisited to him, he pretends to take the high road and chastise those who point out what he does, including a recent stab at NBC. The hypocrisy is so blatant it's blinding, and yet so long as there are a bunch of yokels stupid enough to keep tuning in to Fox to watch the fireworks, he'll get his paychecks and all the critics will be wasting their breath.
Even in politics. Look at George W. Bush. The man lied about WMDs in Iraq. There are other lies, the administration bleeds them, but this one serves as an example well enough. The man lied about WMDs in Iraq, and not just a few, but stockpiles and delivery systems and plans to get more. When the UN started sending back reports that the disarming was going steadily, Bush stepped it up and demanded on television that Saddam stopped playing his games, even when all evidence at the time, and all evidence after the fact, pointed to the fact that Saddam was cooperating more than he was hindering. What did Americans do after Bush started that needless war? They re-elected him. IN RECORD NUMBERS.
It's a question of power. People love people who wield power audaciously. It's why the Napoleans and Alexander the Greats and even the Hitlers get their power and keep it. For all our evolutionary advances, we're still tribal creatures. We love shows of power, because it reminds us that we have it, which is much better than realizing that you don't.
When taken to the extreme they unfairly restrict a person's trade.
E.g., Computer programmer writing games for Ubisoft, moves to EA. Cannot do so, as 'computer game programming' is competing.
Clearly if a programmer for an unreleased game in a certain genre with unique features left Ubisoft and joined EA to help write a game in the same genre, it'd be an issue. I don't see how it should stop them joining EA to program something in a different area.
If you want to retain your employees, then give them an incentive to remain with you, such as good working conditions, good wages, a fun job. Don't indenture them to you by restricting their freedoms if they choose to leave, i.e., work for us in this dark cellar, have no fun, no wage increase, oh and if you leave, we won't let you get another job except in MacDonalds.
(yes, that's taking it a bit too far, and EA aren't exactly renowned for their good working conditions and practices, but hey...)
Dear EA:
Screw you!
With our best wishes,
Ubisoft.
you would rather be a consultant. At least then you are paid by the hour. 80 hour weeks for 6 months at a time while death marching to an unrealistic gold date is no fun. When I was putting in 100+ hour weeks at a now defunct game company I calculated I could make more money on a per hour basis by being a manager trainee at McDonalds.
Yes, the benefits were good.......... but nowhere near the compensation for the long hours.
Fly Fish? Participate in our forum
there is no job security in the game indistry. Period. Top talent is laid of with impunity at the end of development cycles. I worked under a really great lead programmer who has an incredible work ethic, is very talented, and who would work 100+ hours every week to make sure we didn't slip our milestones. He has numerous credits on top titles. Last I heard he was laid off by Lucas Arts (him and the majority of the project's team) after putting in blood sweat and tears to see the project to completion.
You are disposable in the games industry. there is no job security.
Fly Fish? Participate in our forum
That slightly misses the point. If a geek is pissed off with EA and decides to vote with their wallet, then even though it only affects 1 game purchase, if EA piss off enough individual people, that's a lot of sales gone. So it easily could register in the thousands.
jh
Someone had better mod you up because this is one of the most thoughtful things I've seen on Slashdot in years. I've been trying to think of how to explain this for years in better terms than "people love to watch a good ass-kicking".
Yeah I hate to agree with EA on anything because I think they are pretty evil. But non compete agreements I hate even more. So for these poor souls that signed this they are supposed to bow out of the games industry for a year if they are unhappy at their current position? Sounds like they would be indentured servants to Ubisoft. So don't sign it you say or go work for someone else right. I agree but that is not so easy a decision when you are a yong person trying to break into the industry. I personally will never sign another non compete agreement. Having been burned by this myself. But that means a great many jobs are off limits to me and or I am likely to be fired in the future for being unwilling to do so. Which sucks these things should not be legal.
This has nothing to do with EA wanting to steal away talent or Ubi having "unethical" business practices (In EA's opinion). This is about EA trying to make their takeover better for their bottom line. If EA gobbles up Ubi, they have to then deal with the employment contracts. Usually a contract has buyout if the employee is terminated. Well, if EA buys Ubi they are going to probably terminate plenty of employees to cut their costs. They can't do that efficiently if they have to pay X dollars for every employee they terminate. This is just EA trying to improve their bottom line for a takeover plain and simple. But they are doing it under the guise of being a good company.
Error: Sig not found.
If I'm not mistaken, they also have exclusive rights to the team names. Even worse than not having the player names, in my opinion.
It's like sex, except I'm having it!
Top talent is laid ... with impunity at the end of development cycles.
Where do I sign up???
Sadly, here in the States people can't value a good product. No, names on players are more important than quality gameplay and 2K Sports knows this. Luckily, Blitz: The League proved that you don't need a license (actually Winning Eleven has been doing that for years, but it has names if I'm not mistaken).
Oh well, I'm just crossing my fingers that EA doesn't snatch up the NHL license.
"This is considered plagiarism."
I can relate. It would be inconvenient for me to not buy EA's Whatever 2006 and/or go and vote and/or give money to charity or any of those thing that misguided people say can make a "difference". I won't go out of my way to do anything that doesn't immediately solve all the problems in one fell swoop and, since I have no choices that will have that effect, I am sadly unable to do anything.
At least I am not alone in my view. There seem to be many other people who believe as I do.
There are two kinds of sysadmins: paranoids and losers. I'm both kinds.
It doesn't matter to me (or many others if the charts are to be believed) that the names aren't spot on. Everyone knows who they're referring to, the player models look like they misspelled name sakes and have the relevant strengths/weaknesses. What matters is the game - not that I get to play the "Barclays FA Premier League" rather than the "English Premier Division".
I would disagree. When I used to play Tecmo Bowl, I didn't mind that I couldn't pick the Raiders (not my favorite team, but a good team on the game). It said Los Angeles and their colors were silver and black, so the hint was strong enough to ignore the fact that it never said Raiders. Had Bo Jackson (or any of the other stars) not been on the team, however, it wouldn't be worth playing.
I was quoted out of context in my autobiography...
I think what set Blitz the league apart though was the off field things that could be done, rather than the on field gameplay.
I was quoted out of context in my autobiography...
Pot.
Kettle.
Douchebag.
yes, it might not make a difference do EA, but it does mean that you as an individual condone their practices, even if you publicly state otherwise.
They briefly had an exclusive deal with the NHLPA, but the NHL got in the way, saying they wanted competition. Link
I feel the other way- I played Chicago, because I knew they were supposed to be the Bears. Had they not had Richard Dent and Mike Singletary on the defence, it wouldn't have bothered me. But not having the navy and orange jerseys and the orange C would seriously reduce the value for me.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Yea, I went on a spirted rant when I caught wind of that.
"This is considered plagiarism."
"All this was inspired by the principle - which is quite true in itself - that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. These people know only too well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes."
In Quebec, for example, it is often considered "offensive" to speak English on a public street, and represents intolerance of the pure laine Quebecois majority.
I gotta say:
WTF?
Look, in San Franciscio the majority of residents speak English, but I don't consider it "offensive" to hear someone speaking Spanish or Chinese on a public street.
If there's any "intolerance" going on there, it's in the minds of someone who can't bear to hear something other than their preferred language spoken in public!
Actually, the federal government has never used the notwithstanding clause, and Québec is (effectively) the only provincial government that has used the clause; see Wikipedia.
Another example: Canada models it's socialized health care system after Cuba and North Korea.
The healthcare systems in these countries are often grouped together because they are the few countries with fully public healthcare. However, Cuba and North Korea have fully public healthcare because they are communist countries, whereas Canada has fully public healthcare because there isn't much demand for private alternatives. Also, Canada's system was not modeled on either of the other countries's systems; all three came into effect around 1960.
I think you need to read up on what the notwithstanding clause actually says, because while I question its usefulness and purpose, it's nowhere near Nazism like you imply.
This poo is cold.
I sincerely hope you get modded up Insightful. :) If I had mod points, I'd have done it.
I guess I should've gone with a quality gaming experience or a quality title...
But I do enjoy the gameplay quite a bit.
"This is considered plagiarism."
"In Quebec, for example, it is often considered "offensive" to speak English on a public street, and represents intolerance of the pure laine Quebecois majority."
What a bunch of crap. I can tell you this is not true. People like you give this province a bad reputation. You give the image that we are language facist. Which is far from being truthful.
Then why have people taken the case for it to be made legal to purchase health care privately all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada? Sounds like pretty stubborn and persistent demand to me.
The Court agreed that preventing this was a violation of rights and freedoms, but stayed it's decision depending on whether Quebec would use the Notwithstanding Clause? Only to have the La Belle Province (Quebec) say it would use the Notwithstanding Clause to overrule the Court?
You could've hired me.
The same arguments have been applied against spoken speech in public streets, around schools, etc. And, while not having the same Bill 101 force of law, the "offensive" argument is often made.
You could've hired me.
Even if you are only one person who decides to "vote with your wallet," you are doing the right thing.
That's enough for me- I don't need the approval of an entire herd in order to justify my objection to the manner in which a certain company does business.
Luckily, the guys who made this cool browser I'm using didn't have this pathetic attitude, or they never would have started developing it.
They WILL be a game industry monopoly in short order if things continue how they are, though. All on the basis of one sports league signing an exclusive contract with them.
Comment of the year
The audacity with which power is wielded is not so much the key to success as the finesse and scale to which it is exerted. Napoleon won power by getting the army completely on his side. Hitler won power by becoming popular with the masses and then turning them against the smaller groups. Bush, Clinton, Bush Sr., and every president in the last 40 years has won power because of the money and power their party throws behind him, not his own personality.
But Bill O'Reilly is still a bastard.
What, me? Never.
Does "You can't legally sign away any of your basic freedoms in a contract" hold true in Canada as well?
I don't know much about the law of Québec or Louisiana specifically, but the laws of Australia, Canada, and the United States are ultimately based on British law in effect prior to the respective countries' independence. It's as if they share a common law. In some areas of the common law, foreign court decisions are persuasive even if not binding.