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From: JAB <noway@nochance.com>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action
Subject: Re: 'People like to hate EA, I don't know why'
Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2025 08:47:31 +0000
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On 19/03/2025 19:15, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
> 
> In a recent interview, founder of Hazelight Studios wrote that his
> company --developer of the recently released "Split Fiction" game,
> which has been getting quite good reviews - has had a very good
> relationship with publisher Electronic Arts, and that he doesn't
> understand why it receives so much hate.*
> 
> Oh, you innocent summer child, shall I count the ways? Bullfrog.
> Origin. Westwood. Mythic. Visceral. Pandemic. Great studios all,
> bought out and shut down by the beast.
> 
> Not enough? Lootboxes. Microtransactions. Endless live-service
> madness. In-game gambling.
> 
> There's more, of course. Origin, or the EA App, or whatever that drek
> they keep shoving in our face is called. The disastrous debut of
> "Spore", with its onerous 5-installations-forever limit. Or 'there's
> no way it could possibly run without an always-on online-connection'
> release of "SimCity" in 2013.
> 
> Shall I mention games like "Ultima Forever", a terrible MTX heavy
> mobile game that shat upon the Ultima legacy (followed up with similar
> assassinations of the "Command & Conquer" and "Dungeon Keeper" games)?
> Or the publisher's insistence, against developers preferences, that
> their in-house Frostbite engine be used in games that would have been
> better off using something else. Or just all of its half-assed sports
> titles, each little more than a minor revision of the previous but
> with a more current roster and incompatible with last year's MTX
> purchases.
> 
> Or maybe it's just how they mistreated their employees, earning the
> corporation the 'worst company in America' title over multiple years.
> It's constant battles against SAG-AFRTA for not paying its
> voice-actors? The disastrous handling of their feud with
> West/Zampella? The massive layoffs the company keeps performing even
> as its profits soar?
> 
> 
> No, I can't imagine why people have such a dim view of the publisher.
> It's great that Hazelight has a great relationship with EA, but most
> people aren't just looking at 'how a company deals with its partners'
> but at the overall picture, and EA does not come out of that
> examination smelling like roses. It's earned its reputation.
> 

But besides all of that what have EA done wrong?