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.'"

Comments

Simple

[Locke2005]

Your hate doesn't matter as long as you keep giving them your money. Here's an idea: stop giving them your money!!!

Re:Simple

[tatman]

mod this up.

Re:Simple

[eksith]

Rephrase: Better to be rich than loved

If people showed their disapproval with money rather than vitriol on social media, EA would have been a completely different company... or out of business.

Re:Simple

[eksith]

I'm not so sure about #2. There are now quantitative (though, not comprehensive) ways of measuring piracy these days. Researchers would debunk a claim like that in short order, I think.

But I'm pretty sure if EA keeps going the same direction, #1 will be followed by more and more people. Likewise, I feel indie studios/developers will be getting more exposure.

Re:Simple

[TWiTfan]

No only that, but it seems like everyone is either selling their company to them or working for them. I realize that companies go under and people need work, but if they end up owning all the decent IP, there is going to be nowhere else to turn BUT to buy from EA.

Re:Simple

[Merk42]

GPs point isn't that people are ignorant of the reasons to dislike EA, it's that they come out and say they dislike them by voting in the "Worst Company in America", but don't act as if they dislike them by not buying their games.

Re:Simple

[Whatsmynickname]

Here's the problem with this capitalistic idea. For every person who uses logic and reason and does not buy a (multi-player) game because it's not supported well, there are at least nine people standing behind him with cash already pulled out of their wallet ready to buy the game. Why? Because they want to play with their buddies, and all their buddies (especially the alpha ones) all are on-line playing that game. So in spite of all the game's and company's flaws, all logic and reason goes out the window, the game is purchased over and over and capitalism falls apart.

This strategy has worked wonders for the Xbox 360. I've seen people who's Xbox die over and over go out and buy a brand new console so they can continue to play Call of Duty with their friends, because the social aspect of the game is the most important thing to them

Re:Simple

[PRMan]

I often tell my kids, "I can only vote with my dollars."

One day, my 13-year-old responded, "But dad, if everyone did that, they would go out of business. So why don't they?"

Exactly.

Re:Simple

[Hatta]

The gaming market is largely children or teenagers who are too young to know they deserve better.

The age of the average gamer is 30.

They're the ones throwing $60 at whatever game their friends are playing as soon as it hits

How do you figure that children have more disposable income than adults?

I agree with the rest of your analysis. I just blame adults who don't know any better instead of children who don't know any better.

Re:Simple

[gstoddart]

If people showed their disapproval with money rather than vitriol on social media, EA would have been a completely different company... or out of business.

Sadly, in the modern context, they'd go to lawmakers and say that piracy is killing their business, and then concoct some scheme to make someone else pay them. They'd produce fake statistics and graphs to support their position. Kind of what the *AAs did.

Companies are incapable of thinking "Gee, have we pissed off our customers", and go straight to lobbying to make sure their revenue stream is untouchable.

I'm just not confident that a modern corporation would be capable of recognizing and responding to an actual boycott of their products.

Ads showing up in EA games on my XBox is what made me disconnect it from the network, and why it sounds like I won't be buying an XBox 720 because of the always on internet requirement.

I seriously doubt they'd be able to arrive at the conclusion that the reason their product is not selling is because of their own behavior.

I can pretty much tell you right now, XBox 720 has already lost any chance of a sale from me, and by extension, so has EA. Which is a shame, because Tiger Woods is one of the few video games I actually play. Many of us don't play on-line games, and see no value for us in having a gaming console connect to the internet.

Re:Simple

[tompaulco]

1. I haven't bought an EA game in years. 2. If everyone follows my example, they won't change their policies, they'll blame it on piracy.

Not if you (and therefore everybody) in addition to not buying it, also don't pirate it. A game company can tell if there is just nobody playing at all. No support calls, nothing in forums anywhere. It would be obvious that just nobody was playing the game legitimately or illegitimately.

Re:Simple

[Baloroth]

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.

Re:Simple

[DutchUncle]

all logic and reason goes out the window, . . . and capitalism falls apart.

No, capitalism is working, with unanticipated inputs. That's the problem, and it's been discussed before. Economists expect people to act rationally, in their own interest, yet people don't. Economists also fail to factor in the multiple competing interests involved, like "How much cash will I burn so I can play with my friends". If economists were right, nobody would ever drink at a bar or eat at a restaurant because taking a bottle home and cooking for yourself is so much cheaper, which misses about 90% of the point.

Re: Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

You are doing a good job teaching them why libertarianism ultimately leads to a hypercapitalist dystopia. The vast majority of people making up "the market" are not informed, do not want to become informed, and probably cannot become informed in any meaningful way for any appreciable percentage of the product categories they participate in.

You might be the smartest, most savvy consumer around, always rationally voting with your dollars--but most people aren't, and they're going to dilute your good choices with their bad, uninformed, irrational or random ones.

Re: Simple

[Opportunist]

Hey, you act as if it was different in politics. The only difference is that rich people get more say when it comes to voting with your... erh ... never mind. It IS the same.

Re:Simple

[Colonel Korn]

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.

You're assuming that their business model is rooted in a capitalist economy. You couldn't be more wrong. See also: "Too big to fail," vendor lock-in, copyright, patent troll, "right to profit"...

You're arguing that EA will be bailed out because the government sees its continued existence as too important to jeopardize?

Re:Simple

[Opportunist]

As if. In this time and age, voting with your money fails on more than one level.

What happens when you vote with your money and don't buy their crap anymore? Didn't we learn anything of the antics of the RIAA, and later the MPAA? Their products sucked, we turned away from their overhyped crap and went on with our lives, we voted with our money. So now they claim it's not that we don't buy their stuff anymore because it sucks, no, it has to be that we're accessing it illegally. You really think EA's reaction would be any different if people just up and went away, if people ignored their latest and greatest invention because they already know how bland, nondescript and simply not worth the money their "Whatever 2013" will be? You think they'd go "gee, maybe we overdid it, we should reconsider and try to offer what people want so they'll buy it again".

No, the reaction would simply be "they don't buy it, so they pirate it. Lobbying machine to the rescue, we need laws to prop us up".

And they'll get them.

Where's that delusion coming from that we're still living in a capitalist world?

Re: Simple

[RabidReindeer]

You are doing a good job teaching them why libertarianism ultimately leads to a hypercapitalist dystopia. The vast majority of people making up "the market" are not informed, do not want to become informed, and probably cannot become informed in any meaningful way for any appreciable percentage of the product categories they participate in.

You might be the smartest, most savvy consumer around, always rationally voting with your dollars--but most people aren't, and they're going to dilute your good choices with their bad, uninformed, irrational or random ones.

Even worse. Many of the ones who are informed don't care enough to do something. They want their Lower Prices Everyday and their "you-can-only-get-it-from-here" name products and so they collude to feed the beasts.

Re:Simple

[magisterx]

Sadly, not everyone knows. Lots of gamers just buy the games without really paying any attention to who the publisher is much less whether that publisher treated its customer's well or not.

Re:Simple

[Opportunist]

Very true, and very important. But since there will always be people who'd rather copy than buy, blaming it for the loss of sales is quite easy.

There is, in general and to my knowledge, five kinds of gamers.

1. The kind that will buy the game, no matter what. He wants to play that game, and he will jump through any hoop you make him, because it's HIS game and he WANTS it, and he is not interested or able to get it illegally (for whatever reason).
2. The kind that usually buys a game, but has no problem (neither technical, morally or otherwise) to use a crack if the game pisses him off enough that he decides a crack is the answer.
3. The kind that will buy a game if there's no way around it. He routinely uses copies and cracks when available, but if he has to buy a game he really wants, he will buy it.
4. The "activist" kind that will buy a game from any Indie company to "support them" but will copy anything with hardcore DRM to "stick it to the man", and failure to do so will make him do without the game to "make a point". Pretty much the opposite of 3.
5. The kind that will never buy a game, no matter what. If he can't get it as a copy, he'll simply not play it.

Of all those, only group 3 will be affected positively (from the game maker's point of view) with hardcore DRM. 1 and 2 buy the game anyway, 5 will not buy the game anyway and group 4 will be affected negatively by it. So what's left is whether group 3 or group 4 are bigger.

And while group 4 seems like a minimal tree-hugging fantasy group, you'd be surprised how big it can be once you factor in those people that want a game, see its DRM and/or reviews that point to it and abstain from it who also belong into this group of gamers.

Given the success of Indie games recently, I wouldn't say that group 3 is bigger than group 4 anymore.

Re: Simple

[Grishnakh]

And what exactly is your alternative? Having a big government agency that determines how companies should act, and forces them to act in ways that (some) people like? Or better yet, just eliminting private companies altogether and having the government own and run everything?

History has shown that command economies don't work. We've also seen many times that very large companies can be destroyed or at least massively shrunken when their customers abandon them. Remember AOL? It's a tiny shadow of its former self. RIM isn't looking so hot these days either. Is Blockbuster Video around any more? All the other video rental stores are gone. How's Atari doing these days? Microsoft is still doing OK thanks to Office and Windows, but as much as they try, they just can't get many people interested in Windows Phone.

EA is doing fine because tons of stupid gamers keep buying their crap, and then complaining about it. If you don't like it, don't buy it: it's that simple. EA isn't a monopoly, and video games aren't a necessity by any means. This isn't like banking, where it's a pretty integral part of the economy and regulation can be reasonably called for. This isn't like power or water or other utilities, where people depend on them to live or have modern civilization. This situation is akin to a bunch of teenage and 20-something hipsters complaining about Starbucks' crappy burnt coffee, and then continuing to go back and buy more of them for $4 per cup. Cry me a river.

Re:Simple

[Grishnakh]

There's an old saying that applies here:

"A fool and his money are soon parted."

Re:Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't be surprised. With some good lobbying on their part, they could probably convince the government that if EA went under, the USA would be engulfed in chaos and destruction and a hostile alien race would obliterate what's left of our species, after which God would declare his grand experiment a failure and recycle our universe to create a MyLittlePony(tm)verse.

But I think the congress will be more than happy to help them out, seeing how SimCity seems to be the main source of their knowledge on how to manage a large population: Need a new power plant? Put it smack-down in the middle of the city and plant 5 trees next to it. Done. No more pollution, everyone's happy.

Re:Simple

[cavreader]

The number of people such as yourself are only a tiny fraction of customers or potential customers. The majority of people look at the actual product to see if it is something they would like to play. They don't care who made the product or whether the product comes with DRM. Just like your average user doesn't care about who made the operating system or who made any of the software they may use on their computer.

Re: Simple

[Ambassador Kosh]

Have you noticed that most of the "internet native" generations that people keep referring to don't seem to actually use it to find information. I find that most of them play games on facebook, make silly twitter postings, post pictures of their weekend on facebook etc. On average I would say most of them know less about finding information online since they have never really had to think about how to find information and instead mostly just click on links that friends give them. It leads to tempest in a teacup type situations but little actual understanding.

EA is right about one thing, though

[Applekid]

They're right about claiming our hate doesn't matter as long as they get money.

Because for whatever reason, people still keep buying EA software no matter how buggy, no matter how user hostile, no matter how demeaning, no matter what the price.

I think it's just proof positive that the majority of gamers are, at heart, masochists searching for a sadist.

Re:EA is right about one thing, though

[Hentes]

The majority of gamers are fanboys reluctant to part with their favourite series of games. EA owns many titles that were once good.

Re:EA is right about one thing, though

[ELCouz]

^ this x1000 ... That's why people are still paying games from EA.

Re:EA is right about one thing, though

[ArmchairGeneral]

I really like SimCity4, I still play it as the customizing/modding community is still going strong. And for a game that's 10 years old now, that's really saying something.

When I first heard that a new SimCity was being developed, my initial reaction was excitement, and then I immediately remembered who owns it and after looking at their idea of what they were going to release I said no. Always-on, very limited region size, no customization whatsoever, that just didn't sound like any fun.

Sadly, it doesn't matter...

[Stormwatch]

We hate them because they claim our hate doesn't matter as long as we give them our money.

Guess what: it doesn't, because tons of idiots keep buying EA's DRM-laden excrement.

Re:Sadly, it doesn't matter...

[PhxBlue]

I suspect casual gamers and SimCity fans thought EA was up to the task of making the newest SimCity work. But folks who saw Blizzard struggle with the Diablo 3 launch saw the epic fail coming from a mile (or two SimCity maps) away.

Re:Sadly, it doesn't matter...

[Opportunist]

Given the size of the SimCity maps today, you could see it from at least 20 maps away.

so, don't buy the games

[alen]

i haven't bought or pirated a big publisher game in at least a year

if you give them money then all they hear is "Thank you sir, may i have another?"

Re:so, don't buy the games

[Sarten-X]

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.

Re:so, don't buy the games

[Opportunist]

Can we hold them to that promise?

Re:so, don't buy the games

[AlamedaStone]

They also sell new indie games for small/individual developers, totally bypassing the corporate structure of publishing (with its attendant CEO salaries and censorship).

GOG is doing it right, right now.

Sense of proportion

[blarkon]

Gotta love sense of proportion. You've got companies like Monsanto and Academi (formerly Blackwater) and a raft of multinationals polluting and doing bad stuff - but the one that causes the outrage? EA. You want to know why politicians don't bother fixing real problems? It's because people passionately believe that EA is the worst corporate citizen.

Re:Sense of proportion

[Applekid]

Gotta love sense of proportion. You've got companies like Monsanto and Academi (formerly Blackwater) and a raft of multinationals polluting and doing bad stuff - but the one that causes the outrage? EA.

Monsanto, Academi, and Polluting Multinational #32, Inc. don't market to the public. I would doubt the average person has never heard of any of the biggest offenders. Their customers probably like them a lot, and the problem is really that the government oversight is lacking or just plain looking the other way.

Of course, you could nominate them next year and see how they do.

Re:Sense of proportion

[jedidiah]

Unfortunately, Monsanto and Blackwater weren't in the tournament.

The site is called CONSUMERIST. So, you know it's going to be about CONSUMER concerns. It's not going to be a sounding board for every random Chomsky wannabe.

Re:Sense of proportion

[Applekid]

"Monsanto doesn't market to the public"

You do eat, right?

I don't buy Monsanto products. I buy vegetables from a number of names of companies which may or may not use Monsanto products. They're not required to be labeled in my country as such, so aren't. Even if they were, I doubt they would have a big Monsanto logo on the back proudly proclaiming they provided the seeds, or the seeds that produced the vegetables used in my purchased soup, or the seeds that produced the grains that were fed to the animals that provided the meat for my burger.

Re:Sense of proportion

[femtobyte]

When I go to the store, I don't see boxes of "Monsanto(tm) Corn Flakes (now with 30% more Bacillus thuringiensis toxin!)". Monsanto markets to the agribusiness end of production, not directly to the consumer. Aside from products specifically marketed on the basis of *not* being made with whatever crap Monsanto is pushing, consumers are unlikely to see labeling and make purchasing decisions based on Monsanto's branding/marketing/labeling.

Re:Sense of proportion

[jedidiah]

Don't be an ignorant git.

If you don't buy seeds or herbicide then you aren't a customer. You aren't even a customer of the farmer that uses the seed or herbicide. You're several levels removed.

Without the Internet, you would likely not even know who they were.

Re:Sense of proportion

[jedidiah]

EA is an industry stifling behemoth much like any of the companies you named.

A couple of those other companies also qualify as "mere entertainment".

Re:Sense of proportion

[Dracos]

Lack of proportion and perspective. The "worst company in America" dishonor belongs to Monsanto, there shouldn't even be a contest.

Re:Sense of proportion

[CannonballHead]

Just wonder what BofA [would] have to do to outmatch the busted lunch of Simcity 5.

Foreclose on some basements.

Re:Sense of proportion

[Opportunist]

Why, if their customers are satisfied with their performance? Being shot by a gun doesn't make you a customer.

It kinda makes you the product, though...

sad, really

[MickyTheIdiot]

EA does suck. They did screw up SimCity in a big way. But they won because gamers are loud, not because they are the worst.

As another forum (I can't remember which now) pointed out, they were up against a company that has foreclosed on houses they don't even hold the note on.

EA screwed up a game. BoA has destroyed lives.

Re:sad, really

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not about EA screwing up a single game. It's about EA's entire corporate attitude towards its competitors that it buys up, and towards its customers. BofA obviously has several bad practices going on as well, but the hate that people direct towards EA is not based on their disappointment with a single game, it's based on their disapproval of the entire way that EA runs itself.

...when they make GAMES. When all they do is MAKE GAMES. In their own tiny, tiny international market, they're terrible. And only in that market. They're highly influential in the GAME market, they treat GAME DEVELOPERS like shit, they run GAMES into the ground, they screw up GAMES, and they suck to GAMERS.

BoA is a bank. They fuck up people's livelihoods, homes, investments, etc, etc, even if they've never touched a video game in their lives. Those shitty interest rates? BoA's fault. Foreclosing on mortgages they knew were bogus to begin with? BoA's fault. Using connections to mess with international trade for their own benefit? BoA's fault. BoA will screw up EVERYTHING — real-world shit, too, not your damn DLC — from shelter to food to clothing to trade to, oh look, GAMES. Game companies deal with money, too.

EA, on the other hand, are entertainers. They don't even have the clout of the **AA. A bunch of noisy fucking spoiled gamers are all butthurt because they've been conditioned to waste money on a luxury based on the pretty pictures and a name. That's why EA was voted the worst company. Not because they actually are. When EA screws you over, you have a substandard luxury that you can trivially ditch and go with someone else. When BoA screws you over, you don't have a home or money to get a home .

Now, if this were about the worst GAME COMPANY in the world...

Re:sad, really

[AlamedaStone]

BoA didn't try to blame their poor reputation on homophobes.

No, they blamed it on poor people.

Re:FIRST

[Anonymous Coward]

They may suck, but they aren't evicting people or profiting off of an economic downturn that they engineered. That people consider EA worse than the banks is disappointing.

Utopia

[blarkon]

Oh that we live in such a utopia where the thing that outrages the populace the most about the totality of American corporate behavior is the inclusion of always-on DRM in SimCity.

wow

[geekoid]

"We don't hate them because we're homophobes, "
wait, what?

"We hate them because they claim our hate doesn't matter as long as we give them our money.'
And they are correct. If you claim to hate them, but then play their games, then you are either a hypocrite, or need to look you the word 'hate'.

Re:wow

[a_big_favor]

"We don't hate them because we're homophobes, " wait, what?

"We hate them because they claim our hate doesn't matter as long as we give them our money.' And they are correct. If you claim to hate them, but then play their games, then you are either a hypocrite, or need to look you the word 'hate'.

Penny Arcade is commenting on EA claiming that one demographic that voted them the worst company was homophobes.

Re:wow

[lord_mike]

"We don't hate them because we're homophobes, "
wait, what?

EA was claiming that they got a lot of negative votes from people upset with their use of same sex characters in some of their games.

Re:wow

[geminidomino]

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.

The last one is true

[krtek]

Your hate really does not matter as long as you keep giving them your money.

Debunking EA's spin

[onyxruby]

The consumerist has already debunked EA's attempt to spin this. The link should have been included with the story to prevent EA from blaming this on homophobes or people who didn't like the athlete on the jacket of one of their games.

Re:Worst Company? Seriously?

[Merk42]

Worst consumer company. Of the four you listed, only one, Bank of America, was even in the brackets. It did come in second to EA. I didn't vote and I'm not a consumer of either EA or Bank of America, but what has Bank of America done in the past year? I'm not saying they are innocent, I just honestly don't know since I'm not a customer.

Re:Command and Conquer ..

[jedidiah]

The core team from Westwood never left. They formed their own studio afterwards and continued to make RTS games.

Perhaps that's what everyone needs to do. Track down the old talent. See where they are hiding. Buy those games instead.

Re:Worst Company? Seriously?

[XxtraLarGe]

Yes, sorry. I typed that in haste, was definitely referring to Arch Daniels Midland (ADM), not Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).

Re:Command and Conquer ..

[Endo13]

The downhill slide was apparent to me the moment WW got bought out by EA. Even RA2: Yuri's Revenge (the first EA C&C release) wasn't as fun for me as base RA2. Just like every other studio/franchise they've acquired. It just wasn't as noticeable back then, because they were just starting their downward spiral. The high point for EA IMO was back around the turn of the millenium, about the time they released Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed. Everything since then has generally been slightly less fun and slightly more buggy than its predecessor (if one existed). Their first in-house project that really exemplified the future of their QA was Battlefield 1942. Until then, there had never been a high-profile FPS that was more bug-ridden and unplayable upon release. Of course, since then they've managed to top themselves with virtually every new Battlefield release, but it somehow hasn't seemed to matter.

Bottom line, I've seen this coming for a long long time.

Re:Command and Conquer ..

[Jthon]

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

This is pretty stupid

[Ambassador Kosh]

Sure EA is not a great company. Actually I think they are pretty bad but they are not even in the top 10 for the worst companies. Given that we have companies like Monsanto around there is no way that EA is actually worse. We have companies like BP that deal hundreds of billions of dollars in environmental damage and the taxpayer gets most of the bill and somehow EA is worse because they have DRM and crappy servers? We have some drug companies that have made fraudulent journal articles in order to push medications that they know are lethal but are very hard to trace back to them and even when they are caught pay tiny fines compared to the money they made and somehow EA is worse?

Yeah I just don't buy it at all. This is more like some kind of internet popularity contest and it is popular for people to hate EA. Most people have no clue about what evil companies actually do because they don't really look around them. If EA is the worse company you know of then grow up and look around the world a bit and find out what worst really is.

WTF nerds

[Snotnose]

Company A screws people out of their homes with shady business practices. Company B prevents people from playing a video game after paying $50.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'd rather be out $60 than out my house.