EA are award winners! "Worst company 2012"

ArithonUK · April 05, 2012, 11:44:20 AM

Well, they've done it! Electronic Arts are award winners. They have won the Consumerist "Worst company in America" award 2012.

They got 64% of the total vote. With the Bank of America runner up with 35%...

Just last night, as my BF3 game crashed to desktop with the "EA Servers are Offline" message, I thought to myself, "EA deserve an award for their customer service".

It's a shame that "always on" DRM doesn't apply to BOTH parties, rather than just criminal terrorists- sorry; "paying customers".

Even with our OWN server, bought (or at least rented) and paid for, running okay, we cannot run because EA forgot to put 50p in their meter! What's up with that?

We don't have games any more, just rental agreements to unstable BETA tests...

Consumer law should be introduced to prevent the sale of a game unless it can function independantly from the developer and distributor.

i.e. anything more than one-time activation is classed as "online only rental" and cannot be sold as a game.

Penfold · April 05, 2012, 12:40:35 PM

Their response sums it up perfectly:

QuoteElectronic Arts, the Worst Company in America:
We're sure that British Petroleum, AIG, Philip Morris, and Halliburton are all relieved they weren't nominated this year. We're going to continue making award-winning games and services played by more than 300 million people worldwide.

:ranting2:
[/I]

smilodon · April 05, 2012, 01:17:51 PM

You perceive your revenue stream to be under threat and you'll do anything you can to protect it, even if that requires a very short term outlook. I'm sure too many company chiefs, not just EA's, are working on the basis that they just need to see out their contract and get their fat pension without anything horrific happening. Piracy was\is seen as the huge threat to digital media and it's not just gaming companies that have lost the plot with how to deal with it. Music, movie and general software companies have all had mad panics about the possible demise of their industry.

The sad truth is we know how to deal with piracy already. Most people pirate media when there is no alternative way to get the content, paid or otherwise. Millions of us stole mp3's until Apple invented iTunes and then mp3's began to make record labels massive profits again. It wasn't the record companies that had the insight to understand what consumers wanted and that basically we're quite willing to pay for digital music as long as someone gives us access to it. It required a visionary like Steve Jobs (and the Apple team) to come up with the answer, iTunes. Likewise Gabe Newell gave us Steam which largely solved the problem of pirated PC software. Sadly while Steam is brilliant at providing games in the format customers want but without being wide open to piracy the same cannot be said for those who provide games with dedicated online game servers.

Blizzard, Turbine, Bioware etc can do it simply enough for individual MMO's (although they have had their share of disasters in the past as they developed and perfected the MMO server model), and there are niche games like Arma that still allow communities to adapt and develop their games, although they still can't make their online experience bug free and reliable. But no one seems to be able to create similar robust, working system for FPS games. Or if they have then I haven't come across them.

In a way EA are right, the award shouldn't be something they should worry about as an individual company. Any one of a number of publishers could have won it. Sony for example has had a dreadful year and should have been up there on the list. It's actually an indictment of most of the game publishing industry nort just Electronic Arts. And until a new Steve Jobs or a Gabe Newell steps up to design a way to let people play mass market FPS games on line, to build their own communities and do so with good reliability and support we'll have to suffer this half arsed, profit driven mess.

Finally what it does say is that either 300,000,000 people don't care enough about service and reliability and we are all willing to forgive these problems in order to be able to play the games we love or we're all just sheep and stupid enough to keep flashing a credit card whenever a new 'must have' FPS arrives. I fear I'm a fully paid up member of the second group...

Tutonic · April 05, 2012, 05:21:19 PM

If you really hate EA that much, then don't buy their games. Simple, right?

For all their faults, they're not that bad. Plus, they have a very pleasing habit of telling bigots to f0rk off.

smilodon · April 05, 2012, 06:04:43 PM

It just annoys me that we're not asking them to invent the wheel. There are existing models for providing the services customers/gamers want. I fear EA choose work on the 'how can we make the most profit from the least outlay' principle. But I guess that's the way most companies work?

TheDvEight · April 05, 2012, 10:00:12 PM

Arithon it seems the powers that be at EA didnt like this article as All I got from you're link was - 404 - Not Found

hmmmm somthing went wrong?

smilodon · April 05, 2012, 10:16:53 PM

TheDvEight · April 06, 2012, 09:43:00 AM

ta smilo.

EA are award winners! "Worst company 2012"

ArithonUK

Penfold

smilodon

Tutonic

smilodon

TheDvEight

smilodon

TheDvEight