EA’s on a roll this week! First there was the thing where it banned a user from its forums for (rather politely, actually, at least in forum terms) pointing out that, in his opinion, Dragon Age 2 was shit; the ban extended to his EA account and suddenly the dude was locked out of all EA games he owned. After public vilification the company backtracked, claiming a “mistake.”
Then they refused a refund to a guy who bought a copy of Battlefield 1943 for his 9-year-old son. While admittedly that action could be called “Portrait of a Retarded Father,” it’s really not EA’s place to judge his absent parenting skills. (it’s my place).
Then EA PR wog Tiffany Steckler went crying to CNN because NPD’s numbers don’t show what EA wants them to show since digital distribution isn’t included. Never mind that everyone knows digital distribution isn’t included because it’s impossible to get reliable numbers, and no one hates that fact more than NPD.
Next: EA announced plans to boil a kitten on its YouTube channel. I may have made that one up. But they might! Given what we’ve seen so far!
Send an email to the author of this post at steerpike@tap-repeatedly.com.
You should stop signing your articles. I don’t think anyone who has read Tap for more than a week could possibly fail to identify the writer from the vintage of cynical humour/bitterness undoubtedly used as a marinade before submission.
And for a while there I almost thought Activision (let’s not joke around by calling them Activision/Blizzard) had taken the Cunt Crown of Gaming. Kotick may be in a league of his own but as a larger entity, EA’s still got it.
And I remember the days when the spinning geometric shapes wiggled into view before taking me to the simplistic, politically incorrect joy of Road Rash 2… -shakes head sadly-
Well, EA are obviously just trying to keep up with the general direction their marketing has been heading for more than a year:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2794-An-Open-Letter-to-EA-Marketing
So why can’t EA track digital distribution? Is it one of those things that is so obvious no one has thought of it yet? Or do outfits like STEAM just not have to report back to the devs due to the nature of their contract?
As private company, Valve’s under no obligation to disclose anything if it doesn’t want to. I’m sure Steam contracts do assure accurate internal reporting to publishers, but those numbers may not be considered fair & balanced when compared to an impartial group like NPD or Nielsen.
Given Valve’s penchant for tracking everything under the sun I’m sure the company has very accurate numbers for everything about Steam, and in fairness to Valve it does share a huge amount of information publicly… including sales numbers. But since they’re not rolled into NPD, people at EA can argue that NPD isn’t an accurate picture.
In all fairness EA is correct: it isn’t an accurate picture. But complaining about that – rather than tactfully stating it – seems like whiny bad form.
Really everything EA’s done recently is more a matter of bad form than crimes against nature. The EULA (which no one reads, but still) clearly stated that a ban could extend to the games you own; XBLA’s EULA clearly states that you have to be 13+ to play certain games and the kid’s account was set to “child” – plus XBLA VERY explicitly says no refunds – and NPD doesn’t provide an accurate picture.
But it’s less what you do and more how you do it. EA doesn’t do it well.
Regarding EULAs, I think they should be removed from all game installations, console updates, etc. by law. That or be trimmed to 1 page in length.
Publishers know that no one reads them. Who the fuck has time to read 67 pages of rubbish that will never affect 99% of the gaming population? I think it’s even a viable defense in court to simply state that “no one reads them, it’s a universal truth,” therefore how effective are they really?
If you are going to force consumers to read legal documents before they use purchased goods said documentation should be a REASONABLE reading length.
If I gathered all the text from all the EULAs I’ve ever skipped reading I could construct a tome larger than the entire Wheel of Time series.
I’ll just leave this here…
http://kotaku.com/#!5782097/dragon-age-ii-dev-rates-his-own-game-on-metacritic-ea-bets-obama-voted-for-himself-too
And none of the reviews on Amazon are by friends and family of the author….really.
We’ve been discussing this item on a journalist’s group I’m part of. My feeling is that while it’s sort of… uncool, it’s hardly wrong or outrageous or unethical. After all, the guy’s not a journalist, he’s a software engineer. He has every right to compliment his own game, though it’s embarrassing to be caught doing so.
I think with any site that allows anonymous reviews/ratings/whatever you have to factor in a certain amount of partisanship. It’s hardly unethical.
Given how little direct creative control a software engineer has over the finished product I don’t see anything wrong with it. Excluding developers from the playing public is something I’ve never agreed with – it seems poor thanks for their contributions. A developer is still a player.
If the art director, producer or lead designer did it, however, I might think differently.
Yeah I agree with Jakkar on that front. Games are created by so many individuals, all working on their own part of the bigger picture. For somebody who developed the lighting model or textured all the in-game furniture I’d say it’s perfectly legitimate for them to rate a game that they were part of. Lead designers, producers etc. maybe not so, at least not until they’ve distanced themselves from the project.
And I couldn’t agree more with xtal’s view on EULAs. I’ve never read one in my life and don’t intend to on the grounds that I’d never actually play a game ever again because of how slow I am at reading. In Britain most policy documents come with ‘Key Facts’ leaflets that summarise the main points. Only the other day I had to cancel some insurance because one particular point could have royally shafted me in the future — it was a point I would probably have missed if it wasn’t for the Key Facts leaflet.
I also don’t have a big problem with what the developer did. He has a right to his opinion. It is embarassing to get caught doing it, but not that big of a deal.
Some of the other stuff, though… EA can’t get out of its own way.
What does “wog” mean in this article? I know of one meaning, and I don’t think that it means here what I think it means…
SP the thing you gotta realize about EULAs is that legally their enforceability is extremely shaky. Though in this instance what’s legal depends on just how much money someone wants to spend to fight a corporate behemoth, the law is what the law is. Except for extreme cases, EULAs are not enforceable contracts. Period. This is because their terms are applied *after* a buyer has bought the product.
A person generally can’t agree to terms he doesn’t know, dig?
Now, in reality of course any number of (in my view) ignorant judges can say otherwise. And given the direction of the U.S. I doubt the Supreme Court would uphold the interests of an individual against a corporation.
Unless, mysteriously, the individual could raise an argument under the First Amendment, as that seems to be the only value our current court recognizes.
Anyway, as usual, I digress.
Except finally to say this: the EA fiasco almost fully demonstrates one of the biggest problems for consumers as we apparently move toward a cloud (said movement of course may be eliminated as more and more bandwidth providers impose bandwidth caps): we are losing control of what we buy to those who sell it to us. It’s as though we’re moving wholesale into corporate towns, where we’ll be paying corporations for everything we do merely to sustain ourselves while we work for them.
It’s a nefarious system that clearly demonstrates just how broken the U.S. has become due to the ever-increasing influence of corporations over public policy.
I’ve never been sure about a EULA’s enforceability, Ernest, so thank you for helping clarify. I gather the big company can say, “hey, you agreed to the EULA,” and the individual feels that they can’t fight it, so in a way it’s “enforced,” even though it may not have actual weight.
More and more we seem to be moving away from individual rights and into a world of corporate rights. Your comparison to corporate towns is scary… we’ve been there before and it didn’t work out for the little guy.
Don’t worry, Steerpike. It’s not like you live in some state where the leader of your state government can simply take over your local government, cancel all contracts, fire all of your elected officials and appoint some new person or corporation to run your local government if the leader, or some leader-appointed corporation deems your local government in distress.
Oh wait… You do.
Nevermind.
Carry on!
Don’t piss of the Big fellas. Be a good citizen, just STFU and play your god damned video games.
Poor Ajax sounds like he’s having a rough day. *sadpanda*
Actually, I am having a good day. I just found out that I can watch both “Netflix Instant” and my “SlingBox” at work.
Uh oh…
I think the FASA corporation has things right with Sahdowrun – magic awakens in 2012, preceded by massive global upheavals and catastrophies, leading to a world dominated by corporate life, where the individuals are nothing more than company-owned wage slaves.
Certainly looks like it’s heading that way 😉