BattleField 3

[st_dux 26]

So was Britney Spears - just because you like to throw your money away on it doesn't necessarily make it good.

Whether or not any particular game is good is not at issue here. I don't even own BF3 myself, so I can't speak to its quality. My point was simply that charging slightly more for games does not suddenly turn a game company into a greedy bastion for fascism devoid of creativity. EA is charging what it thinks will garner the highest profit from its target market, which is a reasonable business practice that rightfully appeals to the interests of their stockholders.

The flak EA/DICE are getting originates in their fraudulent business practice of advertising one thing and selling another. They advertized a sequel to an estabilished series, including specific features which have not ultimately been delivered. This is bate and switch against "vulnerable" consumers (kids with his dad's cc for a good part). In civilized country(ies) where justice works, they would be appropriately out of business already (the fun thing is that EA shows itself so greedy that this may come about without actual justice interfering)

Are you being serious? For your fraud accusation to be even halfway legitimate, EA would have to have released something completely different from what was advertised, not something that is essentially what was advertised minus a few minor features that you and a handful of others were really hoping for. Maybe if when you purchased BF3 you actually got a copy of Dora the Explorer's Interactive Adventure, you'd have a point. As it stands, there is definitely no potential for legal action here; to think otherwise is patently foolish.

;2125589']I'm not anti-DICE just anti-EA since they have wrecked many great titles in the last two years or so' date=' they are a multi-million pound organisation, [b']they should be happy with making money of the initial product[/b], instead they have to bleed dry the product for $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$. Ten years from now, I doubt any of us will be gaming, when this happens.

(emphasis added)

EA is a publicly-traded corporation, which means that they have an obligation to their shareholders to maximize profits. For them to just "be happy" with the profits made from the initial product without making any attempt to make more would be irresponsible and unethical from a business perspective. If you don't like this, I recommend moving to a non-capitalist country. I hear that North Korea has a booming video games industry.

[froggyluv 2136]

And what they are doing is 'irresponsible and unethical from a Consumer perspective'. Just as they have a choice how to run their business, we the consumer, have the same goddamn right to say it sucks. Don't like freedom of speech - find a Nation more befitting your need for consumer silence...

Oh and by the way, EA is HQ'ed in California which everyone knows is the most Liberal state in our suddenly Socialist Nation -hardly a good representive for Free Market ;)

[st_dux 26]

Just as they have a choice how to run their business, we the consumer, have the same goddamn right to say it sucks. Don't like freedom of speech - find a Nation more befitting your need for consumer silence...

Absolutely, and I encourage people to do so. If enough people feel that EA's (or any other game company's) current business model sucks, there's no doubt that they would be compelled to change it. That said, I feel that the calls for legal action and punishment in this thread are indicative of the fact that this is a matter of a disgruntled vocal minority without the power to create any appreciable shift in the market (there'd be no need for legal action if they could). The fact that there are millions of happy customers plugging away at games like CoD (games that I personally don't really care for, by the way) demonstrates pretty conclusively that the big bad game corporations may actually know a thing or two about how to appeal to their customer base.

Edited March 28, 2012 by ST_Dux

[GRS 10]

Everyone always says the consumer base is accepting it. I doubt it. I bet they just roll with it because they see no other option... The companies that pull that crap just know that they can get away with it because of that, so they do it.

[st_dux 26]

Everyone always says the consumer base is accepting it. I doubt it. I bet they just roll with it because they see no other option... The companies that pull that crap just know that they can get away with it because of that, so they do it.

It's not some abstract theory. The consumer base is accepting it. That's why these practices persist. $60 new games, day-one DLC, micro-transactions... all of it has been accepted by virtue of the fact that people (lots of people) buy it. If it wasn't profitable -- if it were more profitable to charge $50 for a game that includes what would have otherwise been day-one DLC, for example -- then game companies wouldn't engage in these business practices. They engage in them because they work. You can rag on it from a perceived ethical perspective all you want (Lord knows that internet critics love to), but the fact of the matter is that it makes money, and until it doesn't, it will continue. I personally don't see the point in getting all bent out of shape about it.

[GRS 10]

The consumer base is only "accepting" it because they don't want to be left out, not because they like it.

[st_dux 26]

The consumer base is only "accepting" it because they don't want to be left out, not because they like it.

That's a neat theory, but it implies that every game company in existence is actively colluding in order to artificially keep prices high and remove any possibility of a superior business model being practiced. To say that this is unlikely would be a a massive understatement; it is far more likely that the evil DLC model just straight-up works better than present alternatives. The fact is that Joe Regular really just doesn't care that much about the so-called ethics of day-one DLC or micro-transactions (this is solely the domain of internet preachers), and because the extra money involved on his end is really quite trivial (about a couple of beers worth or less in most cases), he's happy to pay a few extra bucks to get some cool shit.

[gammadust 12]

Whether or not any particular game is good is not at issue here. I don't even own BF3 myself, so I can't speak to its quality. My point was simply that charging slightly more for games does not suddenly turn a game company into a greedy bastion for fascism devoid of creativity. EA is charging what it thinks will garner the highest profit from its target market, which is a reasonable business practice that rightfully appeals to the interests of their stockholders.

They're nailing it alright...

24.47 > 16.79 (-31.39%) in 5 months. Of course there might be a multitude of other factors here contributing, including general market ones but it is certainly curious how EA decouples from Nasdaq some months after.

Personaly I love this story, they are getting what they deserve for misleading one of their product's costumers. For perspective also note the small red stripe there in the beginning of 2011, it was when the marketing campaign started to build up, along with what turned out to be inflated shares, in other words "hyped" shares, in other words, minor investors also got deceived and forcefully parted from their RoI, i do have less simpathy for these indeed.

Are you being serious? For your fraud accusation to be even halfway legitimate, EA would have to have released something completely different from what was advertised, not something that is essentially what was advertised minus a few minor features that you and a handful of others were really hoping for. Maybe if when you purchased BF3 you actually got a copy of Dora the Explorer's Interactive Adventure, you'd have a point. As it stands, there is definitely no potential for legal action here; to think otherwise is patently foolish.

(enphasis mine)

Ok... since they only "half" deceived their costumers it is not fraud anymore? "Minor features"? it is the costumer who decides what are "minor" or "major features" in whatever product is advertized. Admit it, they lied blatantly, shamelessly (i won't even bother bringing up the multitude of articles were those inexistent features were factually advertised, you may find some in this very thread though some pages behind). My own words should have been more explicit, but at this moment i simply don't care if there is or not legal action, I don't assume there is a functioning justice, the trendy justice that currently applies is against small fish, so I am not falling for that trap of assuming one could be made in this case.

Btw... i haven't bought BF3, I suspected since very early on that i should hold to my wallet tightly before commiting. During Alpha and Beta I made my choice. And now i laugh out loud at EA's results, but do feel sory for the part of that "8 million" which expected a true sequel and fell for it.

EA is a publicly-traded corporation, which means that they have an obligation to their shareholders to maximize profits. For them to just "be happy" with the profits made from the initial product without making any attempt to make more would be irresponsible and unethical from a business perspective. If you don't like this, I recommend moving to a non-capitalist country. I hear that North Korea has a booming video games industry.

(bold is mine)

To maximize profits... whitin the law, of course we are at a point that law is not what it used to be. False advertizing is criminal and as i said before would be prosecuted in civilised countries. This is much more an earthly issue than mere transcendental "ethics" or "morals".

Edited March 28, 2012 by gammadust

[st_dux 26]

@gammadust:

I have no idea how to explain EA's recent stock price history, but assuming it is related to the quality of BF3, it would seem to me that the market is working. Is that not enough?

As for false advertising, I don't know enough about the divergences between what EA promised and what was ultimately delivered to make a perfectly sound judgment on it without additional information, but I do know that in order to make a legitimate false advertising claim, you have to show that there is a truly substantial difference between what was advertised and what you received. Judging from BF3's critical reception, it would seem that no such difference exists. Even user ratings, which are notoriously slanted toward the negative as people wishing to complain generally have louder voices than those who are content, are generally favorable at a variety of websites. How is this possible if EA made the grand deception that you claim it did? Is everyone else just a blind food?

Edited March 29, 2012 by ST_Dux

[Baff1 0]

It's not some abstract theory. The consumer base is accepting it. That's why these practices persist. $60 new games, day-one DLC, micro-transactions... all of it has been accepted by virtue of the fact that people (lots of people) buy it. If it wasn't profitable -- if it were more profitable to charge $50 for a game that includes what would have otherwise been day-one DLC, for example -- then game companies wouldn't engage in these business practices. They engage in them because they work.

Thsi is not necessarily the case.

If I buy a £30 product and it turns out to be suck, how much effort will I be willing to undergo to get my money back.

Will I walk into the local game shop I bought it from next time I am in town. Yes.

Will I contact online retail, get an RMA number and print it, package the box up and take it to the loal post office and pay for it to be sent back?

Hmmmm. Maybe.

Will I contact Origin, get ignored completely or end up arguing with an online troll who doesn't even work for EA, not get any option on a refund from a foreign company and then take them to court at my own expense to get back my £30.

Absolutely not.

So as time goes by we are actually getting further and further away from accountable sales. Further and further away from good business practise. And the large the beaurocracy we get involved with, the worse this becomes.

So we can expect less people to hold them to account on any specific purpose, it should also not be lost on you that because of the one size fits all nature of cross platform development, it may simply be that for say PS3 or PC, the company really doesn't care too much about that part of it's market. That the company may feel it would earn more money to ignore those complaints than address them.

Which leaves us with long term reputation. Quite frankly companies like EA and UBi don't have any longtime reputation, they don't have any consumer trust for their brandnames in the first place. The first purchase seems to seal that for them with every one. They rely on the brandnames of the companies they buy. Dice in this example.

But what it does have is a floating audience.

A new generation of gamers every year to replace the previous generation they lose.

Ahh well, day 2. 38% installed. Tick Tock.

[Tonci87 163]

@gammadust:

I have no idea how to explain EA's recent stock price history, but assuming it is related to the quality of BF3, it would seem to me that the market is working. Is that not enough?

As for false advertising, I don't know enough about the divergences between what EA promised and what was ultimately delivered to make a perfectly sound judgment on it without additional information, but I do know that in order to make a legitimate false advertising claim, you have to show that there is a truly substantial difference between what was advertised and what you received. Judging from BF3's critical reception, it would seem that no such difference exists. Even user ratings, which are notoriously slanted toward the negative as people wishing to complain generally have louder voices than those who are content, are generally favorable at a variety of websites. How is this possible if EA made the grand deception that you claim it did? Is everyone else just a blind food?

Well it is not directly BF3, but EA knows how false advertising works

Casey Hudson, a few weeks before the release of ME3

This story arc is coming to an end with this game. That means the endings can be a lot more different. At this point we're taking into account so many decisions that you've made as a player and reflecting a lot of that stuff. It's not even in any way like the traditional game endings, where you can say how many endings there are or whether you got ending A, B, or C

The same guy after the release.

I didn’t want the game to be forgettable, and even right down to the sort of polarizing reaction that the ends have had with people–debating what the endings mean and what’s going to happen next, and what situation are the characters left in. That to me is part of what’s exciting about this story. There has always been a little bit of mystery there and a little bit of interpretation, and it’s a story that people can talk about after the fact.

I call this false advertising

Edited March 29, 2012 by Tonci87

[msy 22]

How often do you encounter "you were disconnected from ea online (1)"?

[cozza 24]

BF3 sucks. (More like there customer support)

I brought it when it came out. Good. I loved it when I brought it and played it end on end. (Never mind the fact the game was about $79 dollars. Which is quite cheap here. Sometimes they can be $90)

Then back to Karkand. My PC version let me get it for free. So I did.

Then BF3 stopped working. I could join multiplayer games. But it just freezes when I join. I cant move but everyone else can and I end up dieing. This was in December. I havnt played BF3 since.

I have contacted customer service. Asked for help on the battlelog forums and I still dont get anywhere.

Great. Payed $79 AUD ($81 USD at present moment. So stop ya bitching about $60 :p ) and now I have a product i cant use and noone not even DICE can be bothered to fix. All I get is "its a common problem and we are working on it in a future patch." Its been since December. I have givin up.

[Janez 531]

New patch came out today so you may want to try again. Some nice fixes there but lag can still be quite bad.

[viper[cww] 14]

How often do you encounter "you were disconnected from ea online (1)"?

At least once a week.

[st_dux 26]

@Tonci87:

Having bought and played through Mass Effect 3, I am more familiar with that example, and I can tell you with complete confidence that the ending fiasco -- while indeed a fiasco in several ways -- does not even come close to anything that might be accepted as a reasonable false advertising claim in any court. Believe me, I understand the frustration, but to take it to the next level and claim that this constitutes a fraudulent business practice is frankly ridiculous. All it really represents is bad writing and a producer who misspoke one time in an interview.

[bangtail 0]

@Tonci87:

Having bought and played through Mass Effect 3, I am more familiar with that example, and I can tell you with complete confidence that the ending fiasco -- while indeed a fiasco in several ways -- does not even come close to anything that might be accepted as a reasonable false advertising claim in any court. Believe me, I understand the frustration, but to take it to the next level and claim that this constitutes a fraudulent business practice is frankly ridiculous. All it really represents is bad writing and a producer who misspoke one time in an interview.

Misspoke - ROFLMFAO.

Alot of 'Misspeaking' (AKA LYING) going on in the gaming industry these days.

Honestly ST Dux, your arguments lack any kind of foundation.

Anyone with half a brain knows that these guys lie through their teeth in the name of money. It puzzles me as to why you constantly feel the need to defend them :confused:

Edited March 29, 2012 by BangTail

[gabe_ruckus 5]

I haven't played ME3, but back on Battlefield, the new patch changes a lot of the interface problems the PC had, and I seem to have better performance with it.

While I don't agree with everything EA does, I have dealt with the customer service and found it to be really good. I was having issues with the Karkand pack installing, and I had to use phone support. Hold times were short, and then I talked to somebody in the US who walked me through the problem I was having.

Really, their DRM isn't any more restrictive than Blizzard's, and it's not like I don't already have games I've bought on GoG, Steam, Stardock, and Origin, so it hasn't been a huge hassle to use Origin. At least they're not as bad Ubisoft, although I'd really like to see some voice chat without having to create a group outside the game in BF3.

[froggyluv 2136]

I'm mostly pissed that they removed the ability to host your own little MP rooms stacked with bots -thats a huge takeaway without any notification that Im aware of. Could you imagine if BI released Arma3 without the editor or took away the ability to mod without really telling us? They also, for all intensive purposes, removed the AI -they are no longer engaging in real firefights but a staged Hollywoodish scene that is totally revolved around the player and no actual damage can be done unless the player is present.

Baby diaper.

[slatts 1978]

Could you imagine if BI released Arma3 without the editor or took away the ability to mod without really telling us?

NOOO dont even mention such blasphemes things!

[jblackrupert 14]

Only $39.99 to get all the unlocks... hurry while supplies last

[nodunit 397]

Factoring all of the costs (if you purchase them) between DLC and such, the game would run you over $100 little bit of profit there I imagine.

Edited March 30, 2012 by NodUnit

[Dead3yez 0]

I don't think there are words to describe how STUPID people must be for EA to be able to actually sell unlocks. LOL

It's like paying to take away aspects out of the game, like the fun of working to unlock the next weapon so you can try it out.

[nodunit 397]

I don't think there are words to describe how STUPID people must be for EA to be able to actually sell unlocks. LOL

It's like paying to take away aspects out of the game, like the fun of working to unlock the next weapon so you can try it out.

They aren't stupid, they know people will buy them, and I'm sure the time=money arguement will come up, talking about how people with jobs (like the rest of us who play a game for a short time per day don't) don't have the time to play so this gives them the chance to enjoy the game.

[Baff1 0]

Day 3, 96% installed!

Personally, I don't ever get to play many of the unlocks. 1 or 2.

Because I'm not going to be playing the game for that long anyway.

There comes a point where I'd play it a bit longer if I had the extra stuff to try, but I don't, so I sort of just feel cheated.

I remember in BF2 before some patch I could private server and have all the unlocks.

This was better for me.

Essentially this device is a time sink.

Which makes financial sense on a subscription model but makes no sense to me, since if I'm still going to be playing this game in a months time, it will have precisely nothing to do with me wanting to get any unlocks.

That locked content on the otherhand, might stop me playing it on day 7 rather than day 8.

I don't see the problem with people buying unlocks if they wish to, although obviously I don't consider them to be value for money, especially as all the work to create them has already been done in the asking price.

But whatever! $$££$$!

Milk it baby, milk it some more.

The more money they make the more sequels there will be, so it's not all bad if you are a fan of the series.

And oddly, I still am.

Edit. Of FFS.

Finally it's installed, but the game crashes on launch.

So much failure!

Not even so much as an error message.

I'm close to surrender. This may be a battle I'm just not going to win.

Edited March 30, 2012 by Baff1