Electronic Arts: Encyclopedia II - Electronic Arts - Criticism

Electronic Arts - Criticism

EA is sometimes criticized for buying smaller development studios primarily for their intellectual property assets, and then make the developers produce run-of-the-mill games on these same franchises. For example, Origin produced Ultima VIII: Pagan and Ultima IX: Ascension under EA's ownership, and these two are considered among the worst of the series, obviously aimed at lowest common denominator audience. (Richard Garriott, the originator of the Ultima series, wasn't fond of EA at all, and previous Ultima games contained some subtle attacks on EA). Late productions generally have not been known for their originality; the latest Madden NFL title is a prime example.

EA is also criticized for shutting down its acquired studios after a poorly performing game. Many see EA's control and direction as being primarily responsible for the game's failure rather than the studio. Magic Carpet 2 was rushed to completion over the objections of designer Peter Molyneux and it shipped during the holiday season with several major bugs. Studios such as Origin, Westwood Studios, and Bullfrog had previously produced games attracting a significant fanbase, and when they were closed down many top designers and programmers refused to stay with EA and formed rival studios. EA has also recieved harsh fire from labor groups for their dismissals of large groups of employees during the closure of a studio. Such was the case with GoldenEye: Rogue Agent.

EA's online strategy is also criticized. Many EA sports games for the PC and PS2 are only supported by EA's servers for one year, forcing gamers to buy the next increment in the series (at full price) to continue playing online afterwards. The Battlefield 2 online demo was roundly condemned by the gaming commmunity since EA instituted a 10-15 time playtime limit (unheard of at the time) and shut down servers who ran mods on the demo version. EA also earned much ill-will for refusing to publish for the highly-touted Xbox Live online service, which is run through Microsoft's own servers and which charges a monthly flat fee, regardless of the number of titles. EA would not be able to retain use of its own servers for Xbox games and thus could not charge a monthly fee for every game as they could on the PS2. Ending up, EA capitulated in 2004 and started publishing for Xbox Live since their absence did not slow down the growth of Live as significantly as they had hoped.

EA has also been criticized for other aggressive business methods like the acquisition of 19.9 percent of shares of their competitor Ubisoft in what was called a hostile act by Ubisoft.

Electronic Arts has from time to time been criticized for its employment policy of requiring employees to work extraordinarily long hours—up to 85 hours per week—as a general rule and not just at "crunch" times leading up to the scheduled releases of products. "The current mandatory hours are 9am to 10pm—seven days a week—with the occasional Saturday evening off for good behavior (at 6:30pm)"[3]. The company has since settled a class action suit brought by game artists to compensate for "unpaid overtime" EA management demanded of its employees[4]. The class was awarded $150 million. A similar suit brought by engineers is still pending as of late 2005.

Lastly, they dislike fan-made patches and mods, and have shut down popular fan-made game modifications, resulting in criticism that they could transform the gaming industry into one that is hostile towards fan modifications.

Electronic Arts was also subject to much criticism after releasing the title: NASCAR SimRacing, a much anticipated auto racing simulation. Upon its release, it was found to be extremely "buggy," with numerous software issues requiring a patch. After substantial delay, a patch was released, but it still did not resolve issues in multiplayer that basically eliminated accurate competative racing online as caution flags did not function properly. When users went to EA's forums to complain, EA temprorarily disabled the forum, rather than address the issue. Since the last patch release over 6 months ago, there has been no further fixes, which many cite as being representative of EA's lackluster attention to products post-release. This was particularly aggrivating to fans of NASCAR as EA holds the exclusive license to all NASCAR games, so there is no competition to drive the company to fix the program.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Criticism", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki