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Cacodemon345

Why game makers like EA are nowadays evil?

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I often question myself, why are game makers like EA are now bad?

And why most of the software companies and game makers from the 90s went from good to bad?

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EA has a tendency to buyout studios, take innovative intellectual properties, and then homogenize them to the point where they're no longer even recognizable. 

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1 minute ago, The-Heretic-Assassin said:

Money harms gaming. It's the real evil.

Why the fuck the companies care for money and not for customers? They should have known that by now.

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EA had a hell of a ton games made during the 80s and 90s. They are anything but new. They still practice the same shit they've done for decades now. Yearly releases, DLCs and rushed games ruining games aren't anything new to them. 

 

They also have an exceptionally high amount of stupid PR, other companies remain silent when shit hits the fan. Not them! EA amazing community managers fuel the fire and give the most pretentious replies one could think of all the time. They get a nice sense of satisfaction from milking the customer after all! 

 

5 minutes ago, Cacodemon345 said:

Why the fuck the companies care for money and not for customers? They should have known that by now.

They are companies not charities. EA just knows their fanbase will pay anyway so why care.

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6 minutes ago, Cacodemon345 said:

Why the fuck the companies care for money and not for customers? They should have known that by now.

 

Because publicly traded corporations are on the mission to "maximize shareholder value".

Where that really means, to make an *impression* of maximizing shareholder value - and inventing business schemes that exploit the customer are always high on the agenda because they are an easy sell to stupid Wall Street people.

 

Real, genuinely sustainable business has no place in that world of madness. Some get lucky and can keep up the charade for a few years longer. But mark my words: The entire American economy is built on this principle and it's only a matter of time until it comes crumbling down with a deafening collapse. It simply cannot work forever.

 

Of course as long as there's enough dumb sheep to unquestioningly buy such stuff, the madness will continue. It's not software, but just look at Apple: They bloated their corporate image to some insane lifestyle religion and people actually fall for that bullshit!

 

 

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Speaking as an EA (and UBIsoft) shareholder (since 2012), its because they have shareholders. It takes a lot of money to give everyone money. Its not evil, its just a return on investment.

 

I believe in EA in the long term. They are perhaps the only real threat to Steam although maybe Microsoft store has better potential now. People seem to hate Origin, but for a time I found it to be superior to Steam. Plus the fact that EA still makes games rather than Valve maintaining them. That alone will continue to get the Origin name out there.

 

Steam cares about customers, but I think they care about as much as they legally have to. Its legal policy that tends to push Steam / Valve's customer policy while EA and Origin are pushing things forward and hopping on the fact EA the evil company actually cares about customers. They don't just give out 2 hour money back trials... they give out 48 hour money back trials of their games. EA was the first to offer refunds. EA has a $5 a month subscription for their older and still high quality games.

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I never been able to find a single company/individuals or group who always made Quality and fun games. 
Why game making is a lot different from other types of arts like movie-making,creating music writing stories etc
probably coz too many people involved in making
Not all the games by ID software or John Romero was as great as Doom1,2 

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39 minutes ago, geo said:

Speaking as an EA (and UBIsoft) shareholder (since 2012), its because they have shareholders. It takes a lot of money to give everyone money. Its not evil, its just a return on investment.

 

Just wait until those business antics backfire and the investment will be lost. I'd rather invest my money in something less fickle than software developers. Miss one trend and you are gone, that's not where I'd put my money.

 

42 minutes ago, geo said:

Steam cares about customers, but I think they care about as much as they legally have to.

 

That's normally the case with all big corporations. It's too bad for them that there's laws they have to obey, otherwise things would look much worse, especially where monopolies develop.

 

How good for me that GOG services most of my gaming needs for far less money and better quality... 😄

 

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1 minute ago, Jerry.C said:

Just wait until those business antics backfire and the investment will be lost. I'd rather invest my money in something less fickle than software developers. Miss one trend and you are gone, that's not where I'd put my money.

That's not going to happen as they are smart enough to always follow trends.

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1 hour ago, Cacodemon345 said:

I often question myself, why are game makers like EA are now bad?

 

Before anything else, I haven't followed closely what they're doing, but from what I've noticed thus far it's probably because they care only about money and not much else and many of the games end up being rushed, or, worse, have content removed from them at some point and then sold as DLC (don't know about many other games, but I know for sure this happened with MW2012, at least some of the content that was later sold as DLC was actually cut while the game was in development).

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17 minutes ago, Cacodemon345 said:

That's not going to happen as they are smart enough to always follow trends.

 

... until they miss one. What makes you think that game development is immune from that? Economic history is full of examples where once powerful leaders missed the signs and eventually went bankrupt. Often this happens when a new trend starts to threaten a company's core business model - but rather than adjust they start defending their turf and eventually have to yield.

 

 

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Doesn't Activision rush game development and do yearly releases? They even shut down great developers for stupid decisions Activision themselves made (again, rushing development).

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38 minutes ago, Jerry.C said:

 

Just wait until those business antics backfire and the investment will be lost. I'd rather invest my money in something less fickle than software developers. Miss one trend and you are gone, that's not where I'd put my money.

 

 

That's normally the case with all big corporations. It's too bad for them that there's laws they have to obey, otherwise things would look much worse, especially where monopolies develop.

 

How good for me that GOG services most of my gaming needs for far less money and better quality... 😄

 

For me, holding onto the stock for 6 years has been its own reward. It was really just a whim at the time to buy shares. It seemed like a good time since things were down so bad for UBIsoft and then I looked and saw oh things are down for EA, so since I was buying UBIsoft stock I bought EA stock. I'm not a real investor. Its more or less I had money to burn. I've thought about investing in game development in general, until the whole issue about people taking the money and running. There are better investments out there, but for bigger money. Its like why collect cars when you can collect physical copies of games?

 

I just remember it took 6 weeks to get a refund from Steam at some point and it was never a true refund, it was in store credit. Even if the game was never redeemed. I bought something for a friend. It wasn't until that Australia / Germany nation wide refund policy that Steam / Valve put theirs into play. Long after EA / Origin's.

 

As for GOG. Everyone has their own preference.

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27 minutes ago, The-Heretic-Assassin said:

Doesn't Activision rush game development and do yearly releases? They even shut down great developers for stupid decisions Activision themselves made (again, rushing development).

 

I don't think you find any game publisher not doing this. The real problem behind all these bad decisions is that making modern games is a very, very risky business with ever more increasing budgets. Produce one costly dud can unhinge some company's financial situations So it is inevitable that the publishers play it safe and release what is proven to work - and once money gets tight the game needs to be rushed. This will only become a problem for them if people just stopped buying those half-finished games.

 

30 minutes ago, geo said:

As for GOG. Everyone has their own preference.

 

Sure. My preference is to buy games without DRM. I'd rather wait for a few years to get that and if some publisher absolutely does not want to give me that - well - there's enough that do.

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Game companies have always been evil. The non-evil ones are usually the exception, not the norm.

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EA crashed the Ultima series so hard the fanbase acts like the ones under their banner don't even exist... they messed up Ultima IX's lore, plus the avatar of britannia forget his previous adventures and is thrown into a new format with none of the previous games' mechcanics. and it's really really dull lol. Ultima 8 is pretty maligned too cos of its single character party and real-time elements, but it still has some good features and really great music so I can partially forgive it. actually it's kind of a welcome change after Ultima VII's tendency to have all its NPCs say "hail avatar the hero let me take your jacket" and generally make the whole game feel like one big victory lap right from the start

 

ahem

 

I don't follow game dev drama because it's boring and painful but this I know

 

 

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They kill all their games and the developers who work on them. They also steal and intentionally mismanage.

That's just a brief summary however, these videos go into more detail and raise a lot of points.
 

 

 

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2 hours ago, Ajora said:

EA has a tendency to buyout studios, take innovative intellectual properties, and then homogenize them to the point where they're no longer even recognizable. 

 

They also push games out the door way too early, so you end up with a bug filled mess. EA is quick to drop support for their games after release.  They are well known for over hyping their game and paying outlets for good reviews. They are also known for cutting out sections of their games and locking them behind a DLC paywall. They probably had or have the single most predatory loot box scam in the recent Battle Front. I could go on and when it comes right down to it the vast majority of publishers pull the same crap. But EA is the most brazen about it. They are effectively the Comcast of the game industry and have been for years. 

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Creating good products would be beneficial in the long term, but the long term doesn't matter. As long as you make more money in the short term, you can outcompete and crush anyone who doesn't. And then all those evil corporations are the only ones at the top. Same thing with business in general. If employees were paid more money, they'd spend more and help the economy, but starving them is what makes instant profit. And if your business won't do it, the other ones will, and will dominate you.

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2 minutes ago, Scypek2 said:

Same thing with business in general.

 

My brother could tell endless stories about this and the mismanagement by incompetent executives that tends to go on in large corporations. One has to wonder how they can survive. Of course not all are like this but the environment in which they have to operate is a huge factor in this.

 

How good that I don't have to deal with this professionally. 🙂

Working for a smaller business can have its perks.

 

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3 hours ago, Zahid said:

I never been able to find a single company/individuals or group who always made Quality and fun games. 
Why game making is a lot different from other types of arts like movie-making,creating music writing stories etc
probably coz too many people involved in making
Not all the games by ID software or John Romero was as great as Doom1,2 

Are you implying that there is not a single movie studio, movie label, or novel publisher that has one sold a product that isn't high quality and not a blatant cash grab?

 

Because if so ... where the hell in the world do you live, to never have encountered anything that so much hinted at the opposite? Candy Land?

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31 minutes ago, Knee Deep In The Fan said:

EA thinks it is just too big to fail, so they just don't give a damn.

 

 

That reminds me of Microsoft and their failure in mobile. They thought they were too big to fail, and many analysts thought the same, declaring Windows Phone the victor by default before launch. And look how that ended up. In the process they irreparably harmed their main product and the only thing that saved their ass is that the Linux camp is still not capable of providing a desktop experience that is good enough for the common public and Apple doesn't want to compete.

 

Or of Nokia as a smartphone maker. They also considered themselves invincible and totally missed the touchscreen revolution. When they were finally able to react it was too late, they rushed into a bad deal with Microsoft that made things even worse, and ultimately they ended up being sold to Microsoft (who in turn made even more losses out of the mess they got.)

 

Bottom line: There's no such thing as "too big to fail."

 

 

 

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