IGN: Why Do People 'Hate' EA? - Seriously? What is that all about? We asked EA.

I kinda hate them, i end up looking for bugs in games when i have time to play any, and do not play them but, test their functionality, triyng to crash them intentionally, exploiting, also i got bored of spending my last 5 free hours each night and 2 spare weekend days to play games, i just youtube, movies, or play the same game for a long time. i am playing mechwarrior online ATM,
Also, i am a tester at Ubisoft now...

Speaking about DICE... EA made the most stupid mistake by forcing Frostbite engine on all studios, they are not used to code and develop on frostbite! (fifa used ignite, bioware used unreal engine, etc)
Basically they forced developers with no experience with frostbite, to make games on frostbite, and DICE is too busy making their own games, and do not have enough people to take them and scramble them to the different studios to help them with the future frostbite games.
BTW, frostbite is just a ripoff of cryengine

 

Origin as a service is actually pretty good and their refund policy is brilliant - don't like teh game? Get your money back no questions asked which prompted Valve/Steam to do the same (Valve was also under pressure from the EU as a blanket no refunds policy infringes on law).

In the past, EA has had plenty of problems, some of them mainly on forcing developers to release games to a strict deadline often leading to games released with bugs and problems which further tarnishes the credibility and future prospects of such developers.

Then there were the DRM issues, a notable example was Spore with it's finite amount of activations and constant need for internet access to verify it's license however EA weren't the first publisher to do this and weren't the worst as EA did listen to consumers and relaxed restrictions unlike Ubisoft which have a track record of awful DRM, Starforce anyone?, uPlay which initially needed to be constantly connected to the internet and if your connection dropped, the game would ungracefully be forced to quit preventing saving of any progress made. Ubisoft has changed this policy but only in newer games released. If you take a look at Tom Clancy's HAWX 2, that still uses the awful DRM.

More recently I'd say the main criticism of EA is their DRM schedule, every game they release now you can guarantee that there will be a season pass type content (Battlefield Premium for example) and while this includes future content, if you don't buy into, the content itself is very expensive and it could be argued that content released later on in the game's life, was really withheld content from the base game.

I'm going to have to disagree with you, Frostbite as a business decision is probably one of the best decisions from EA as it's an inhouse engine that wont need licensing fees or royalties to be paid to other parties and it's an extremely flexible and scalable engine. From a graphical point of view, the quality that Frostbite brings is excellent. I do agree with you on the development side of things, each dev team adapting to the new engine has it's teething issues but, your examples are a little off. Bioware for example used their own engines initially, Jade Empire, Dragon Age Origins, Knights of the Old Republic etc, it wasn't until Mass Effect that Bioware used Unreal engine and that was a buggy pile of sh*t and the game often being jokingly called Mass Defect. If you take a look at Dragon Age Inquisition, that's a really well made game, acting is good, graphics are brilliant (they still look really nice now) so it's not like Bioware don't have experience with this game engine which makes things Curious about Mass Effect Andromeda in terms of while quality had some regressions.

One thing is for certain, Frostbite is not a ripoff of Cryengine it's completely proprietary so much of it's features are closed off to the public but Dice built it from the ground up, moving from their aging Refractor engine.

I think EA in general aren't the worst publishers, because of how big they are they do come under fire and their DLC policy is awful but they do publish quality games (but bad comes with teh good too).

Personally Ubisoft get the crown of "Evil Publisher", buggy games, lack of support, draconian DRM which they still have and refusal to remove DRM from old games, maybe Ubisoft will change their ways, I don't know, EA on the other hand they do change over time and they do eventually listen to their customers but at the moment, not when it comes to DLC

 

These companies need to stop with the BS. They need to let studios do original content again. These companies have gotten to be like Hollywood,just stick to what makes them the most money. There are so many game series they could go back to and people would go nuts.

Make a new Star Wars space combat sim.. and do it right! Have it using a proper joystick not game pad. It would sell like hot cakes. If they did it the way id redid Doom, it would be a guaranteed hit! What's the problem here?

There are so many game properties from the past, that if they threw some money and support behind it, would be absolute money. Where is a new C&C game? I don't understand this logic.

 

As a former EA "employee" would like to give more light to this "fact" of yours?

 

I was referring to your reference about trump getting more criticism than EA.
If EA had promised to make there Games Great Again (and didn't deliver.) They would be getting more criticism than trump. We got trump for free, but EA games $60.00 ea.
I don't hate EA because their games are bad. I hate them for their practices.
Example, reinstall your OS, upgrade your PC components and your can no longer play your game because EA considers these actions as being installations on a new machine. Or Iam sorry but we cannot fix our game because pirates are stealing all our profits.
This was all before their DRM solution, Origin, so I do not know if you still loose your games for upgrading/downgrading your machine.
EA has been dead to me for over 6 years, if a game says EA, I say not for me.

 

So you essentially hate them for something you just admitted that you don't know is the case anymore?

Ouzo, me too as that statement looks like one lie too many that kills his credibility.

 

Correct, I think that is all covered by "Dead To Me". But I believe the quote
below still holds true. Plus, reviving a thread from 2012 speaks for itself.

 

because they buy up the market so there's no competition so they can sell the same underdeveloped game every year. A cancer to the game industry.

 

Crysis came out in 2007, during development time, between 2005-2007 of crysis, Crytek sold out all it's assets to EA, in 2005, and sold it's far cry brand to Ubisoft. Crytek however, also gave EA access to it's Cryengine and during the development time, EA also asked DICE to make a new IP, called Battlefield Bad Company, which came out in 2008, about 6 months after Crysis. They used the newly bough Crytek to ask access to their engine, and basically it was the building blocks for the first version of Frostbite, which the first Bad Company used. The "amazing" dynamic world destruction and some major change in assets names so it is not obvious to anyone that their code is a rip-off , are the only new things offered by the first Frostbite engine

 

While it's plausible, that's sadly circumstantial, do you have any sources to to back up this claim?

 

The nickel and diming and ways they're trying to make money aren't even the main reasons they're hated as a games publisher. It's the way that they buy up studios and IP's that people like and proceed to water them down and churn out **** sequels to them before just shutting the studios down. The IP's are then just sat on for years.