Electronic Arts (EA) became famous for the closure of game studios, greed and contempt for the players. And there is no sign that the company is going to change in the near future.
I was once asked why I always call Electronic Arts a corporation of evil. Most people don’t really understand the negative attitude towards this company. They remember excellent Fifa, Need for Speed, Mass Effect and do not understand how the company deserved such a title.
Indeed, no one has canceled EA’s services to the industry. It is not so much a matter of the quality of the games as of the company’s attitude towards the players. Probably only the deaf did not hear, and the blind did not see all the excitement around Battlefront II. The problem is that this is not the first offense of the company, but only the one that has come to the surface.
Dead Souls
Not the most obvious offense is closing the studio. We see only the transfer of rights to play from one hand to another. Most often, this turns into a total failure, but there are also good outcomes.
EA has 16 closed studios, which it has been destroying since 2001. In 2017 alone, electronics have closed three large studios: BioWare Montreal, Headgate Studios and Visceral Games. For example, BioWare Montreal was closed due to the failure of Mass Effect: Andromeda, and Visceral Games was disbanded due to an unannounced Star Wars game.
Usually, EA closed studios that had the audacity to stumble once and not justify the financial calculations of a corporation, such as Origin Systems and Westwood Studios.
Separately, I would like to tell the story of EA’s cooperation with Slightly Mad Studios. In 2017, the corporation invited the studio to develop the third game in the Need for Speed: Shift series. To attract developers, EA offered a tasty contract with 1.5 million compensation and a lot of funding. They only added a condition that SMS could not cooperate with other publishers.
It all ended with EA trying to bankrupt the studio by canceling the project and leaving the developers without funding. During this period, the company began buying parts of Slightly Mad Studios, including part of the team. Nevertheless, the studio managed to find a loophole in the contract and release Test Drive: Ferrari Racing Legends, and later Project CARS with Project CARS 2.
Scrooge McDuck gaming industry
I wrote about the greed of developers in the article about the modern gaming industry. Mostly it talks about EA and it is for good reason. Yes, now all the developers are sawing the game on DLC, but our “hero” has gone further.
Here, the Fifa fans’ heart twitched and asked for their stop. Around Fifa 16, donate was introduced into the game, which is spent on “cases” with football players. Then it was calculated that in order to build a dream team from top players, you will need $ 624. Already in Fifa 17, EA introduced a system of paid bonuses that improved the parameters of the players on the field.
The second high-profile scandal happened already with Battlefront II. Then the studio decided to put money on the lips of the players and gash the system of “loot boxes”. Here EA weren’t pioneers, but their greed took them further than Valve and Blizzard. The items that players knocked out of these cases gave a real game advantage. Of course, the game did not allow for the ultimate bend, but this system influenced the already precarious game balance.
Speaking of balance. News recently surfaced that EA is working on a new matchmaking system that will encourage players to play more. So, the system will regulate the difficulty of matches, selecting weak opponents for the player. When the system notices that the subject is losing several matches in a row, it will be thrown to weaker players. Now our gamer happily bends the noobs and buys more items in the game.
Worst company in the USA
Quite a provocative subtitle, but it’s the most accurate wording. In America there is a Consumerist blog that ranks companies. Every year he conducts a vote among readers to choose the worst corporation.
78% of users voted against the corporation of evil, which allowed EA to receive the Golden Turd award for the second time in a row. She received this award in 2012 and 2013.
In the modern world, commerce rules the ball. Most developers make good games not so much for history as for high sales. Electronic Arts is clearly overstepping the line, and only gamers themselves can stop it.
