Why Electronic Arts Sucks
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Electronic Arts is the Microsoft of the gaming world. I can’t stand them and I refuse to buy their games because they truly do not care about their employees or customers. Here are 6 reasons why we should boycott EA.
They ruined SimCity
Electronic Arts bought Maxis back in 1997, acquiring the rights to the SimCity franchise. Ever since that moment, SimCity has sucked. What once was one of the best strategic simulation games was turned into a dumbed down game with SimCity 4. Then it was remade into a game that just plain sucks with SimSocieties.
They resell the same sports game to us year after year
Madden 06, 07, 08, NBA Live 06, 07, 08. They sell us the same game every year with slight modifications and updated rosters. The gameplay for Madden hasn’t really changed in years, and as a result the sales of Madden are starting to drop off. The same thing can be said for all of the EA Sports games. We haven’t truly seen and mind-blowing innovation with these games for over 8 years. Why buy them?
They shut out competition
In 2004, ESPN NFL2k5 hit store shelves at $29.99. Not only was it lower priced than Madden, it was a better game. Threatened by this, EA threw their assload of cash at the NFL and NBA for exclusive rights to make games based on those leagues. Now we are stuck with Madden with no chance of other companies to grow their own better NFL or NBA games.
Luckily another company got the MLB licensing. MLB08: The Show and Major League Maseball 2K8 are really good games. Much better than the MVP line of games were.
Their overseas technical support sucks
Have you ever had problems getting your EA game to work? Try speaking English to their support team. Better yet, try understanding them. Even if it’s something as simple as a problem with a CD key, you probably won’t be successful in getting EA Tech Support to help you at all. Gone are the days where they would actually troubleshoot issues between the game and your video card. Now when you call they just advise you to uninstall and reinstall the game. If that doesn’t work they tell you to get new drivers for one of your multimedia devices.
They treat their employees poorly
After the Enron debacle, we are in an age where ethics matter more than dollars. Back in 2004, EA settled a lawsuit with its employees over unpaid overtime. The suit, filed in 2004 stemmed from employees’ allegations that they were required to work long hours and weekends with no overtime compensation.
EA has made billions and billions of dollars yet they avoid rewarding their employees with the money legally owed to them for overtime. I’m sure for EA employees, this is just a needle in a haystack regarding employee/employer relations.
They fail to manage most of their web pages
EA sells a certain game, then they make a pretty web site to go along with it. After they have taken all your cash, they have no interest in supporting you anymore and they let the web sites go without maintenance or support. A perfect example of this is the Sim Theme Park page. It’s been titled Untitled Document at the top for years. You can’t find a patch for the original SimCity anywhere and if you’re still into the last good version of SimCity which is SimCity 3000, good luck finding any support or patches for that. They also shut down The Sims Online, which sucked but many people bought the game and might still want to play.
It would cost EA virtually nothing to still provide information and patches for these games, but they choose not to. Want add-on’s or patches for your game that’s 7 years old? Screw you! We already have your money!
7 Comments
d00msay3r3
March 11th, 2008
at 3:29pm
I agree!! I was a huge follower of EA’s Motor City Online. I helped to beta test the game for them. I then proceeded to purchase the game (at full price mind you). I also then paid my $9.99 a month for the almost two years it was online. It had a huge following. They had 4 servers which were full at almost any given time of day. They continually promised us new content, but yet failed and gave us only 2 new racetracks in 2 years. Yet we continued to pay and play. They KNEW they had screwed themselves out of their yearly Need For Speed ‘crapass’ game cash. So they eventually shut down the servers and basically told us all “too bad”. Not so much as even an offline patch or multiplayer patch for us to host our own servers. There was even an attempt to buy out the franchise, and they were turned down cold.
I miss this game soooooo bad. It was in my opinion as well as many others to be the best pc racing game ever. There has to this day been no other. I would gladly shell out 9.99 again to see this spark back up!
Mark
March 21st, 2008
at 11:04am
Yeah, EA does blow. BF2142 + Punk Buster + Vista = WTF!?!?! Vista may be a new security model (aka, the right way) and its a bit of a change, but WTF!? I have games like COD4 and it works great. Sim City Societies and BF2142 crash my system on a regular basis. Apparently they dont pay for the good coders….
texastony
March 23rd, 2008
at 10:39am
I have yet to see EA do a game that I would sacrifice my left arm to buy. It seems as though they are just not the gaming company that they used to be. It really is a shame also that there is no competition when it comes to sports games and we are seeing the consequences of that with the Madden and NBA Live franchises. I played both SimCity 4 and Societies and found them both to be very boring and it is true that they do not keep up with their websites at all.
Alex
March 25th, 2008
at 11:22am
My god I didnt know it was this bad! I knew EA sucked n all that but i’ve been checking out some old games that have been favourites scince I was 4! They siriously messed up command and conquer… I really do think EVERY gamer should boycott EA for what they have done to us all.
Yelgath
June 15th, 2008
at 10:56am
EA should be shut down they’re a joke and they ruin like everything. Here’s yet another reason why EA sucks. They said that load of crap about that they are gonna bring back mac gaming. Well they released CNC3 for mac ( Which I bought because I use a mac ). Then they had a the genius idea of not releasing the expansion for mac. Yep. They released the game for mac, then made the expansion unavailable. Now if I want to play the expansion I have to rebuy the windows version of CNC3 to put it on my windows, then buy the expansion. And EA confirmed that they have “no plans” to make a mac version. They suck and I have no idea why they have been so successful.
Rafa
July 7th, 2008
at 11:39am
EA really is horrible. Their way to manage account is a disaster. I play Battlefield 2142 (which is really bugged) and I play it online with the same account I used to play BF2 and so I was supposed to appear with a 2 above me but that of course never happened. And one day I wanted to change my password this was about 1 year ago. They decided to change a login thing and you had to use your e-mail instead of you classic EA account name…
I never got to change my Battlefield 2142 password cause everytime I changed my password at EA site my account’s password would change but not the password I sued to play Battlefield 2142. I am Brazilian (the Brazilian EA site takes 1 month to load) but since they made that change I have to access my account from the EA American site as in the Brazilian EA site it says I haven’t created any persona yet whereas before they made that change I could access them from the Brazilian EA site. Then I finally find a answer in the EA Battlefield forum to change my Battlefield 2142 password but I also needed to change my e-mail to change the password! So I changed my e-mail and I can’t re-switch, it’s just a lot of confusion. Plus I had to send millions of e-mails to EA beacuse of that f*cking punkbuster which I guess I don’t even have to explain a thing about it, it just sucks. Oh and when I bought the Battlefield 2142 which game with Northern Strike (the one with DVD-ROM,CD whatever) I had to wake one f*cking week because I couldn’t play the Northern Strike maps. And now I wanted to end all this and just delete my account from EA and lose all my stats and start all over again (I’m like ranked in 5000 in Battlefield 2142) I discover I can’t delete my account and need to wait some months so it their crappy service automatically deletes it.
Nick
July 9th, 2008
at 4:53am
They’ve been successful because idiots like me keep buying games like Battlefield Modern Combat because it has the Battlefield label. Guess what. It sucked balls. Now, Bad Company on the other hand looks like it could be a good game. But no doubt EA will leave all the bugs and imbalanced issues the game has. 2 RPGs or so to take out a tank from behind? Pistols more powerful than an assault rifle? Pfft.