Slashdot Mirror
EA Repeats As 'Worst Company In America'
An anonymous reader writes "Electronic Arts has successfully defended its title as the 'Worst Company In America.' Consumerist finished its annual tournament for bad companies, pitting notorious companies against each other in a single-elimination bracket where readers vote on which is worse. EA won last year, and today Consumerist announced the results of this year's final vote. EA was voted worse than Bank of America by 78% of participants. 'A made a royal mess of the SimCity release by failing to foresee that the people who would buy the game — and who would, per the game's design, be required to connect to the EA servers — might actually want to play at some point in the week after making their purchase. But that's just the latest in EA's long history of annoying its customer base with bad support.' Of course, EA saw this coming, and its CEO pre-emptively responded last Friday. Of course, many of his explanations and promises rang hollow for gamers who are sick of the company's practices: 'Until EA stops sucking the blood out of games in order to make uninspiring sequels, or at least until they begin caring about how much gamers hate their lack of respect for our money and intelligence, this is going to continue. We don't hate them because we're homophobes, we hate them because they destroy companies we love. We hate them because they release poor games. We hate them because they claim our hate doesn't matter as long as we give them our money.'"
You present that idea as if it hasn't been around about EA for years. It's done nothing.
The gaming market is largely children or teenagers who are too young to know they deserve better. They're the ones throwing $60 at whatever game their friends are playing as soon as it hits, and they're the ones who will buy the rest of the game in DLC if they have any money left. Consumer action that excludes them is never going to cause EA to change: they're way too profitable. Consumer action that DOES include them... doesn't happen because again, they have no patience and don't know they can demand better.
And, truth be told, I'm deeply skeptical that any demographic really "votes with their wallet" with their own interests in mind.
It's not stupid, you're just ignorant. Try reading the links, and you'll see EA's self-congratulatory bullshit claiming they're being "targeted" by anti-gay bigots because they refuse to stop players from making gay characters in games.
I've bought probably a dozen big-publisher games over the past two years... but often through GOG, which I can't praise highly enough, even though I risk sounding like a shill.
I don't know what kind of arrangement GOG has with the copyright holders, but their offerings are DRM-free*, unlimited in downloads, and cheap to boot. No, they don't have the latest greatest AAA titles, but they do have games that are fun, and once upon a time, they were big-name games, too. Even if half my purchase profits EA or another psychotic game baron, I'm glad to know that they see the purchase coming through GOG, in the hopes that some data-mining lackey in the hidden lair of evil game companies notices that a more liberal sales model is performing slightly better.
*I recall seeing a few listings that said the game included its original DRM but came with a fix to disable/bypass it. I also wouldn't be surprised to see a few of the old "find this word in the manual" prompts, but GOG usually includes the game manuals. Of course I can't find any such listings on demand.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
It should be pointed out that EA did lose a ton of money last year ($45 million quarter 4 2012, $381 the quarter before that). If they keep on track they should go out of business pretty quickly.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Petroglyph Games. They started out with Star Wars: Empire at War and since moved on to the Graxia series.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroglyph_Games
BoA didn't try to blame their poor reputation on homophobes.
No, they blamed it on poor people.
"All these years believing you're the signified monkey, only to find out you're just a big hunk of nobody cares."