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> It's extremely obvious they're less concerned with addressing issues and more concerned with telling everyone about how many users they have or what their sales are:

All of it can be interpreted this way: this PR piece isn't meant to address customer concerns -- it's meant to address shareholder concerns.

That is a great assessment of the PR piece. It made me realize that my anger with EA for some of the ways I feel they've changed the gaming industry may have caused me to take it a bit too personally.

As someone who was an avid gamer, I felt like the statement was addressed to gamers. But, you may be more correct in saying it was for shareholders anyway.

To be fair, people werent exactly happy when they had to sign into Steam to play HalfLife2 in 2004 either. Times are different i know, but people tend to forget that Steam was forced upon us in quite similar ways and really wasnt everyones darling like it is today.

I agree with the rest of your comment though.

I think the disconnect there is that Half Life 2 was a superb achievement in gaming, and worth the investment of dealing with Steam (arguably, Counter-Strike 1.6 started the Steam train, though, and Team Fortress 2 keeps it chugging). If EA gave us a Half Life 2 of its own that required Origin, they might pull it off.

I can't think of one, which is telling. SimCity had the potential to be and, well, wasn't.

The title that required me to install Origin first was Battlefield 3 and thats a pretty awesome game by every measure, if you are into these kind of big budget military shooters that is.

I wouldn't have cared about Origin if it wasn't for a few provisions in their licensing agreement that made me very nervous. In particular the bits about letting them scan your whole hard drive (Steam's only lets them scan the folders it writes to) and the provision they added about "You can't sue us, but we can sue you." While other services have the latter one, having it in conjunction with the former really gave me a huge big brother vibe. I wouldn't have used it with the first one anyway as that's intrusive enough, but the second just made it worse.

Source:

For the claim about Origin's license letting it scan your whole hard drive: http://www.nerdbuster.com/2011/09/eas-origin-wants-to-scan-y... http://www.gamespot.com/news/ea-origin-eula-sparks-privacy-c...

For the second claim about the one way copyright lawsuit provision: Chapter 17, section A can be found here: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&...

In it, they specifically say that the exemptions from this non-lawsuit clause are related to copyright (big claims) and small claims court. Since most users aren't likely to own copyright or patents, I call that stacking the deck of available actions.

Valve has since proven itself, though. EA has done the opposite. If Valve disappointed people as consistently as EA does, people would still hate Steam — but instead Valve has made it the most unobtrusive DRM scheme known to man.

I think they aren't very happy today, too. I believe the registration itself is bad customer experience, be it with Origin, U-play or Steam.

I've bough^W licensed a DRM-encumbered game. Well, that happens. Just silently create me a nameless account behind the scenes without bothering me with forms and whatever. Tie it to PC and in case of reinstalls or multiple devices let me authenticate by entering CD key or whatever proof-of-purchase's available and then ask to create a password.

Meanwhile, just lure me to social hub or store with a menu option(s). If I'll find the service useful, I'll eventually fill out the details. If I won't - no reason to care about me anyway, as I won't use the service I don't like unless it's really enforced upon.

Nope. Got a game, but have to fill out forms. They want an email confirmation, secret question, obligatory CAPTCHA, cumbersome launcher software and whatever.

That was the case in 2004, yes, but now people look forward to getting their games on Steam. The value added by the Steam client is enough to get people to choose games on the Steam platform, as opposed to direct downloads from Amazon or the developer-- in fact, most of those come with optional Steam keys anyways because loading your purchased game into the Steam system is worthwhile enough to do in and of itself. I think the most telling point here is that Valve has only had a handful of it's own games drop-- Portal, HL, L4D, CS, and TF2 are the 5 that come to mind, and that's over 9 years-- compared to the number of IPs that EA binds to Origin, and yet people still choose to load their 3rd-party games into the Steam client.

Origin, on the other hand, is coming into the market as an underdog entry from a hated company with a history of decommissioning game's DRM and multiplayer servers within a couple years of the game's release. While they've only had 2 years in the market to Steam's near-decade, unless Origin manages to come up with significantly more value added to the client itself, their IP is going to be their sole draw.

Actually I still dislike Steam and avoid that too. Generally I will buy a non-steam version of a game if it is available. I don't want my computer to take longer to boot up or to run slower in case I want to play a game so I don't have Steam set to start automatically.

This means that if I want to play a Steam game (I have a couple like Portal) I must first wait for Steam to open up, get internet, log in (oh so slowly) and finally it will think about opening my game. However undoubtedly there's been an update and so steam will decide to install this first. All in all I'm bored by the time the Valve logo pops up and the actual game can start loading. Or you know, I could just pirate the game and it would open straight away without the need for Steam.

So in short, Steam is also horrible and forced. But at least they make better games and have something like customer support.

"45 million registered users can't be wrong"

Hell, Stalin had that many in 1948!

Free mobile games such as Simpsons tapped out require you to signup to origin to interact with anyone else. That is a ton of people with origin accounts that have never paid a cent for anything and also haven't visited it outside of a mobile game.

Whereas I have a steam account with a heap of paid for games. So in both cases I contribute to the total user count, dollars spent though is completely different.

As a non-gamer, I don't get it.

Why do people buy EA games if they hate them so much?

I am not quite sure but I think it might be along the lines of the fact EA cannibalizes so many studios. If you are a fan of a certain game series and then EA comes in and buys the studio that makes it or the rights to it you are still going to try out the next release of the game. The problem is that EA ruins it almost every single time from what I have heard. You can say that people should know that is going to happen due to their reputation but people will always have hope that it will be different just this time.

The same reason why people are customers of TicketMaster, BofA, Comcast, or many of the companies competing for Worst Company in America: While EA doesn't have a whole monopoly on their market, they are an unignorable player.

People hate TicketMaster but they aren't willing to forego a concert to voice their opinion. People hate BofA but they don't know about the great alternatives they have in credit unions. People hate comcast, but sometimes it's the only ISP available. Similarly, EA touches on all of these fronts.

Because on the whole they publish some very good games, even the most staunch EA detractor can admit that. The vocal minority isn't an accurate representation of the millions that buy EA games (and they publish some of the most popular games you can buy, particularly their sports franchises like FIFA & Madden).

There's a limited number of people who can publish a AAA title. EA is one of those few.

Further, EA's strategy of late has been to acquire IP to which gamers have already developed a sentimental attachment. So you may hate EA, but you really love Commander Shepard, so you do what you gotta do to keep hanging out with her.

EA has a LOT of money to throw at games. They're one of the few publishers that can play at that level and put out blockbuster, ridiculous budget games. People like the polish and shine of big-budget games, some of which are genuinely not possible with less money.

Unfortunately, there's also an aspect that consumers don't get a whole lot of choices. Movies are a decent comparison to that. Why are there so many bad sequels that everyone hates? Cause they still buy tickets. Any movie > no movie.

Plus, EA used to make great games.

EA still does make great games, sometimes. Their problems tend to be more toward customer-hostile actions (see: SimCity, the myriad Origin customer service horror stories, the letter that spawned this thread) and their tendency to eat smaller studios that were fan favorites before their acquisition (BioWare, Maxis, and so on). That last one is important to understand the vitriol thrown at the company, I think; it's a bit galling to see a franchise like SimCity, that touched so many people's childhoods (like mine), become the joke that it has.

IP mostly, for example, SimCity (2013) was the first (complete) iteration of the venerable series in 10 years. A lot of people (including myself) were interested in an improvement on games we played as kids and teens back with the first SimCity. The marketing, information and videos released ahead of the game indicated a solid and fun game. Fun enough to warrant at least putting up with an always online experience. To me the biggest issue isn't ultimately the online aspect (while I disagree with it, if it really bothered me I wouldn't have bought it.) The big issue is that for a game with a history of reflectively deep simulation and gameplay, this one falls on it's head hard. I've put a few hours into it, the only challenge in the game is fighting against things that are essentially design issues/bugs, not in the challenge of managing a complex and changing city.

Anyways, this is the first EA game I've bought for myself since SimCity 4, first time I actually installed their platform Origin. Actually that points to the interesting reality, the people who buy these games may be simply purchasing a gift.

I imagine some mixture of.

1) They own a number of franchises that had lots of fanboys before EA got them. The fanboys cling to the hope that EA won't screw it up.

2) They own a lot of sports franchises and in some cases have the only games which are officially licensed by the sporting bodies.

3) There are lots of newer , younger and older casual gamers who have completely different expectations about what they want from a gaming experience.

4) They advertise their games a lot , all over the place.

> Again: just because you have a bunch of people willing to pay you money for your crap, doesn't mean it isn't crap and you couldn't be doing better.

Personally I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with F2P games with micro transactions. I feel Riot has created a great F2P game with League of Legends. Micro transactions are only used for non-essential stuffs (for example skins for your heroes or to "buy" heroes quicker then possible by the normal "grind").

For the rest I agree with your opinion. And with regards to SimCity, I really feel they should change the game to make the always-online functionality not required. Sooner or later the services will go down and in the current state the game will be useless.

I actually didn't have any issue with the micro gaming or F2P structure. I completely agree with you in regards to Riot. I was actually just mentioning it as another example of the PR piece simply saying: "but we've got a whole bunch of other people paying for it, so we can't be that wrong."

I'm not sure what your expectations are of a PR piece...do you want to see EA's KPI dashboard and development roadmap? Shareholders don't even see that, so why should you? And to be fair, I think a specific thing they mentioned was giving away SimCity for free to 900k users, that's not trivial.

I actually really appreciated the honesty of this piece because I think it shows some integrity on EA's part to be willing to admit fault. How many companies have driven themselves into irrelevance and destruction by thinking they were right every time?

I don't think it's worth talking down their numbers either, consumers vote with their wallets. If you really though a product was crap, you'd find something else, otherwise there's clearly something of quality there that keeps you coming back.

I work in the newer side of the games industry and see in painful detail how far EA has to go to catch up with recent trends and regain their dominance in the marketplace, but as someone who's also had my fair share of memorable experiences from EA games, I'm pulling for them.

> giving away SimCity for free to 900k users

Just to clarify, he was referencing the free game offer to people who already bought SimCity. [1]

[1] https://help.ea.com/article/simcity-something-extra

> I'm not sure what your expectations are of a PR piece...

http://www.apple.com/au/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/

"45 million registered users can't be wrong"

when you're misquoting people to make your point, maybe something is wrong with your argument. BTW I have no connection to EA and don't think I own any EA games.

It's more of a paraphrase than a misquote. Even if it was a misquote, there is nothing wrong with his factual argument nonetheless.

Also, if you are uncertain of who publishes the games you own, you can't outright deny connection with a publisher.

The exact quote is "45 million registered users are proving that wrong."

Sure it's not 100% word-for-word, but the sentiment is spot-on. What's your problem with his quotation?

When you assume there was malicious intent in misquoting someone, maybe you should check to see if it was intentional or not before attacking their entire argument. I edited my comment for accuracy, but it doesn't make it any less valid.

Who said anything about malicious intent? I just think it was a sloppy argument. The misquotation is (or was) a matter of fact.