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Gisse
2013-04-10, 11:50
Source: LINK (http://consumerist.com/2013/04/09/ea-makes-worst-company-in-america-history-wins-title-for-second-year-in-a-row/)

http://consumermediallc.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/eagoldenpoowcia2013.png?w=610&h=739

Following last year’s surprise Worst Company In America victory by Electronic Arts, there was hope that the video game giant would get the message: Stop treating your customers like human piggy banks, and don’t put out so many incomplete and/or broken games with the intent of getting your customers to pay extra for what they should have received in the first place. And yet, here we are again, with EA becoming the first company to ever win a second Golden Poo from Consumerist readers.

After an astounding number of votes, Consumerist readers once again chose EA over Bank of America, with the video game company taking nearly 78% of the vote.

LESSONS UNLEARNED
What did EA do (or not do) that it managed to achieve what none of the previous WCIA champs — Comcast, AIG, BP, Halliburton, RIAA, Countrywide — have ever been able to?

Like many other competitors in the WCIA bracket, EA has repeatedly failed at three core requirements of running a consumer-friendly business:

1. Provide a Product People Want and Like

Yes, EA has games that sell in the millions, a number of which are well-reviewed and some of which are genuinely loved. But the company also has a history of pumping out products, or rushing games through development, in order to cash in on a brand name. Just in recent years, there have been several notable examples. Dragon Age 2, while it has its defenders, was seen by many as an inferior cash-in that would have benefited from a longer development schedule. Likewise, the sequels for Dead Space have been been similarly derided by some fans of the original.

The most obvious example was Mass Effect 3, which had the bad fortune of being released in the weeks leading up to the 2012 WCIA tournament. Fans of the first two games, who had invested large chunks of time and money, were left with an empty feeling after reaching the obviously rushed endgame. Detractors accused EA of pushing to game out too early and focusing too much of its energy on the new multiplayer side of the game, since that promised the company a revenue stream in the form of in-game microtransactions for users who want to acquire the many characters and upgrades. The reaction to ME 3 was so negative and so widely publicized, EA was compelled to release a slightly more satisfactory ending only a few months later.

Similarly, the recent release of SimCity 5 came with the news that users would need to be connected to the Internet in order to simply play by one’s self. The company claims it is not a form of anti-piracy digital rights management (though not many people believe that), but instead is about “realiz[ing] a vision of players connected in regions to create a SimCity that captured the dynamism of the world we live in; a global, ever-changing, social world.” Translated, that means EA wants you to always be online so you’ll be encouraged to buy things from the in-game store.

This ballsy decision on EA’s part sets a precedent that the company will surely follow in future games, meaning that consumers will have to choose between the game they want to play and the company that requires them to always be online, whether it’s to monitor their use or sell them new outfits for characters.

“EA has become a company that releases mediocre products created by faceless teams,” wrote Penny Arcade’s Ben Kuchera in a story about the WCIA finals. “There is no real vision at work, no grand design. Just the idea that free-to-play games and microtransactions are the wave of the future, or at least they better be, because none of the company’s $60 boxed releases are finding much success with either critics or gamers.”

2. Sell Your Product at a Reasonable Price

Like movies, video games require a large amount of money and the efforts of many talented individuals. And so games are going to cost an amount of money that will allow the publisher to make a profit. But the largest video game publishers, including EA, have been accused of refusing to compete on pricing, meaning that consumers pay $60 for a new game because that’s what the studios tells us it will cost. By the same token, EA’s deals with sports leagues like the NFL mean that no other competitor is free to offer a competing game that either offers more content for the same price, or similar content for a lower price.

Then there are the free-to-play games that EA makes such noise about. They may be “free” to play, but EA openly admits that the goal of creating these games is to nickel-and-dime users into paying for in-game purchases. The company’s CFO recently stated that EA intends to include these microtransactions in all its free-to-play games.

Beyond any possible price-fixing or consumer chiseling, EA is making money by allowing advertisers into its games — even the ones that people pay a lot of money for. Most recently, people who purchased SimCity 5 were treated to their first piece of extra content — a de facto ad for the Nissan Leaf. So EA gets paid, while its customers get to download an interactive advertisement.

3. Support the Products You Sell

EA made a royal mess of the SimCity release by failing to foresee that the people who would buy the game — and who would, per the game’s design, be required to connect to the EA servers — might actually want to play at some point in the week after making their purchase. But that’s just the latest in EA’s long history of annoying its customer base with bad support.

Customers who paid full price for games, or who spent or saved huge piles of in-game cash in EA’s online products, would suddenly find a problem with their accounts, but attempts to rectify the problem — or even get a response from EA — would go unheeded.

In the wake of last year’s WCIA win, EA’s head of customer service told CNET that big changes were coming for the company and that it would be improving how it responds to customers and adding call centers to better handle things. And yet, just the other day a Consumerist reader in Europe sent us his chat transcript with an EA rep that shows the company still has a long way to go.

The customer had a simple question about linking an Origin account to his Xbox gamer tag, but the EA rep could only tell the customer that nothing could be done over chat and that he would need to call a customer support number to discuss the problem. Making matters worse, though the customer was in Europe, the EA rep provided him with a phone number for EA’s U.S. support office.

The support issue is only going to become an even bigger concern as EA includes more ways of making in-game purchases and requires Internet access just to play games. Each transaction is a chance for an error, and one server crash could mean millions of people left with useless games until someone slaps a shoe against the side of the server.

SEALING THE DEAL
Perhaps EA is secretly of the school of thought that there is no such thing as bad publicity. That’s the only way to explain the decision by Peter Moore, the company’s chief operating officer, to release one of the most defensive, deflective, non-apology apologies we’ve ever seen.

In his misguided, misinformed missive, Moore says things like “we can do better,” while at the same time attempting to put the blame for its WCIA success on a mysterious, unseen cabal of homophobic right-wing blog commenters and people who don’t like whichever football player(s) are on the cover of Madden NFL.

“I have a feeling that a rather pronounced enthusiasm for nickel-and-diming might have caused a slightly more elevated level of dissatisfaction with customers,” writes CNET’s Chris Matyszczyk.

Moore’s note also marked the second time EA has tried to deflect criticism by pointing to previous winners of the Worst Company tournament, as if to mock consumers who dared to express their discontent with a mere video game publisher.

Make no mistake: Video games are big business. A company like EA — and Activision, Ubisoft, Nintendo, and Sony, etc. — merits just as much scrutiny as any other business that plays a leading role in a multibillion-dollar industry. It’s only a fractured, antiquated public perception that video games are somehow frivolous holdovers from childhood that allows gamers to be abused and taken advantage of by the very people who supply them the games they play.

“Until EA stops sucking the blood out of games in order to make uninspiring sequels, or at least until they begin caring about how much gamers hate their lack of respect for our money and intelligence, this is going to continue,” writes Penny Arcade’s Kuchera. “We don’t hate them because we’re homophobes, we hate them because they destroy companies we love. We hate them because they release poor games. We hate them because they claim our hate doesn’t matter as long as we give them our money.”

Instead of deflecting, we ask the higher-ups at EA to reflect on the following question:

When we live in an era marked by massive oil spills, faulty foreclosures by bad banks, and rampant consolidation in the airline and telecom industry, what does it say about EA’s business practices that so many people have — for the second year in a row — come out to hand it the title of Worst Company In America?

Burning
2013-04-10, 15:52
This is why I find it mind boggling people still buy EA their crap. People still Pre-order games they know will be full of advertisements and micro-transactions trying to milk you for money. *Pre-order games they know nothing about *cough bf4 *cough* Orgin literally states : BONUS CONTENT (????? ) EXPANSION PACK (????) *What bonus content? A new hat for your singleplayer soldier? a extra single use grenade? What DLC? 2 extra maps @ 15$ ?
It's like buying a dvd from a unknown man on the street "NOO MAN, trust me, this is awesome, just give me 60$ and I promise it will be cool whats on this disc"...

Don't people learn, or care about the future of their (loved) series. Or do people simply not realize their wallets are the only thing that can make a difference...
Still trying to understand that.

Gisse
2013-04-10, 15:55
Response of EA

Source: LINK (http://www.ea.com/news/we-can-do-better)

We Can Do Better

The tallest trees catch the most wind.

That’s an expression I frequently use when asked to defend EA’s place in the gaming industry. Â*And it comes to mind again this week as we get deeper into the brackets of an annual Web poll to name the “Worst Company in America.”

This is the same poll that last year judged us as worse than companies responsible for the biggest oil spill in history, the mortgage crisis, and bank bailouts that cost millions of taxpayer dollars. Â*The complaints against us last year were our support of SOPA (not true), and that they didn’t like the ending to Mass Effect 3.

This year’s contest started in March with EA outpolling a company which organizers contend is conspiring to corner the world market on mid-priced beer, and (gulp) allegedly waters down its product. Â*That debate takes place in bars – our audience lives on the Internet. Â*So no surprise that we drew more votes there.

Let me cut to the chase: it appears EA is going to “win.” Â*Like the Yankees, Lakers and Manchester United, EA is one of those organizations that is defined by both a legacy of success, and a legion of critics (especially me regarding all three of those teams).

Are we really the “Worst Company in America?” Â*I’ll be the first to admit that we’ve made plenty of mistakes. These include server shut downs too early, games that didn’t meet expectations, missteps on new pricing models and most recently, severely fumbling the launch of SimCity. Â*We owe gamers better performance than this.

Some of these complaints are 100 percent legitimate – like all large companies we are not perfect. But others just don’t hold water:

Â* Â*Many continue to claim the Always-On function in SimCity is a DRM scheme. Â*It’s not. Â*People still want to argue about it. Â*We can’t be any clearer – it’s not. Period.
Â* Â*Some claim there’s no room for Origin as a competitor to Steam. Â*45 million registered users are proving that wrong.
Â* Â*Some people think that free-to-play games and micro-transactions are a pox on gaming. Â*Tens of millions more are playing and loving those games.
Â* Â*We’ve seen mailing lists that direct people to vote for EA because they disagree with the choice of the cover athlete on Madden NFL. Yes, really…
Â* Â*In the past year, we have received thousands of emails and postcards protesting against EA for allowing players to create LGBT characters in our games. Â*This week, we’re seeing posts on conservative web sites urging people to protest our LGBT policy by voting EA the Worst Company in America.

That last one is particularly telling. Â*If that’s what makes us the worst company, bring it on. Â*Because we're not caving on that.

We are committed to fixing our mistakes. Â*Over the last three weeks, 900,000 SimCity players took us up on a free game offer for their troubles. Â*We owed them that. Â*We’re constantly listening to feedback from our players, through our Customer Experience group, Twitter, this blog, or other sites. Â*The feedback is vital, and impacts the decisions we make.

I expect the debate will include a lot of comments under this post. Â* But here’s the truth: each year EA interacts with more than 350 million gamers; Origin is breaking records for revenue and users; The Simpsons: Tapped Out and Real Racing 3 are at the top of the mobile charts; Battlefield 3 and FIFA are stunning achievements with tens of millions of players; and SimCity is being enjoyed by millions of passionate fans all over the world.

Every day, millions of people across globe play and love our games – literally, hundreds of millions more than will vote in this contest.

So here’s my response to this poll: We can do better. Â*We will do better. Â*But I am damn proud of this company, the people around the globe who work at EA, the games we create and the people that play them.

The tallest trees catch the most wind. Â*At EA we remain proud and unbowed.

Gisse
2013-04-10, 16:26
This is why I find it mind boggling people still buy EA their crap. People still Pre-order games they know will be full of advertisements and micro-transactions trying to milk you for money. *Pre-order games they know nothing about *cough bf4 *cough* Orgin literally states : BONUS CONTENT (????? ) EXPANSION PACK (????) *What bonus content? A new hat for your singleplayer soldier? a extra single use grenade? What DLC? 2 extra maps @ 15$ ?
It's like buying a dvd from a unknown man on the street "NOO MAN, trust me, this is awesome, just give me 60$ and I promise it will be cool whats on this disc"...

Don't people learn, or care about the future of their (loved) series. Or do people simply not realize their wallets are the only thing that can make a difference...

Well, i understood this personal and i am sick of this crap. You don't like game don't buy it. If i preorder game it is my problem. I didn't bought it because of "bonus grenade" or what ever but because of BF4. If you say that like that i don't support good game series then just to get clear. When BETA come out and i notice it is crap (doubt it) i will cancel my preorder and that will hurt much more EA then if you didn't bought it as they will see how much money they are loosing. If you say it is same as BF3 well, BF3 was same as BF2 and all other FPS games as you are running around and shooting and killing something. Does that make BF3 or any other FPS game clone of "Wolfenstain 3D"?

This whole text is not about BF4 but about EA. EA have answered on all those accusation and in answer you could read lot of interesting things.

Every big company have similar problem. I work fro DirecTV and my company have similar problem. You do tremendous job on something and your software don't do blowjob and suddenly all are unhappy.....

Safa246
2013-04-11, 13:07
Ive been thinking about this for a while now and although i realize this is quite an emotive topic, wanted to give my few cents worth. When i think of BF3 (and i am a huge fan, if a not particularly good player) i think of it this way: If i went to a movie i would pay £7. If i bought a good current book i would pay £10. BF3 premium cost me, say, £60. A movie lasts two hours, so £3.50 per hour and most of the movies I see are crap. A book might take, i don't know, 10 hours to read, so £1 per hour. i have played BF3 for 369 hours. So £0.16 per hour. WOW! Incredible value for money. Even if I put the cost of my pc into this equation I am probably at about £3.50 per hour, which still seems like pretty good value for money.

But then when I think of the richness of the BF3 experience I am bowled over - the friends I have made at OG, the depth of stats that I pour over, the youtube videos I watch, the articles I read... And on and on. Now I know a lot of that is created by the fans and not by EA. But for me its still part of the experience.

I suppose the difference is that I am not, really, any longer, a serial player of new games, looking for the next high. I spent years playing Space Quest and Leisure Suite Larry and Wolfenstien (WAY before 3D!) and Duke Nukem (2d versions first!) and all the Sims and Black Hawk Down and Half life and Portal. But since BF3 I have had Portal 2 sitting on the shelf - i played a few hours of it, loved it but went back to play with my OG friends (who persistently want to shoot me in the back! Whats with that?) I recently bought FarCry3, played it for a couple of hours (it looks really cool, i must play it one of these days but in the meantime I think Ill join Talpiot or Val in the metro...) nope, for me BF3 is it - and I havent even played a lot of the maps or a lot of the modes in detail. And I still dont know how to fly a helicopter or a jet.

Will I buy BF4?

Damn sure I will!

Is EA the worst company in the world. Not a chance! That would be my company, coz they dont allow me to play BF3 during lunch breaks!

Gisse
2013-04-11, 13:59
Burning sorry for my rough answer.

Shadowfox
2013-04-11, 14:59
Come on Gisse, EA's response in a load of bullshit.


This is the same poll that last year judged us as worse than companies responsible for the biggest oil spill in history, the mortgage crisis, and bank bailouts that cost millions of taxpayer dollars. Â*The complaints against us last year were our support of SOPA (not true), and that they didn’t like the ending to Mass Effect 3.
lol wut? What about all the other screw ups gamers haven't forgot?


Â*
Many continue to claim the Always-On function in SimCity is a DRM scheme. Â*It’s not. Â*People still want to argue about it. Â*We can’t be any clearer – it’s not. Period.
riiiiiiiight, so what is it for then? Show us, why we need to connected 24/7 ...

Â*
Some claim there’s no room for Origin as a competitor to Steam. Â*45 million registered users are proving that wrong.
This is probably the most retarded way of thinking EVER! Ofcourse you have 45m users, you are FORCING them. Give people the choice to play the games with Steam or without Origin and Origin will be dead in a matter of days.

Â*
Some people think that free-to-play games and micro-transactions are a pox on gaming. Â*Tens of millions more are playing and loving those games.
Yes, and hundreds of millions don't play them and probably never will.


We are committed to fixing our mistakes. Â*Over the last three weeks, 900,000 SimCity players took us up on a free game offer for their troubles. Â*We owed them that. Â*We’re constantly listening to feedback from our players, through our Customer Experience group, Twitter, this blog, or other sites. Â*The feedback is vital, and impacts the decisions we make.
The only decisions the feedback has an impact on, is AFTER release. It's TOO LATE then!

I'm sorry Gisse, but I have to agree with Burning on this one, I can't understand why people would still pre-order a game from EA.

Gisse
2013-04-11, 15:24
Well people. You have right of free will and you can play bug free games ... Â*there is exactly 0 of them. Also you can chose not to buy something. It is way world work.

If EA want to sell games over Origin and i don't see any problem with that. Â*Valve started with Steam and EA started with Origin. Don't see any problem in that. Don't like it you can always order box from game shops.

About DRM ... don't know. To play Diablo you need to be online also and newer heard that somebody told anything about DRM?

Play4Free games of EA are good games. Battlefield Play4Free is great game. There is bunch of people who play it. If you measure game by number of people which don't play it ... well don't know what to say but Starcraft is game which millions of people didn't play and there is still huge community behind it, Battlefield 2 wasn't played by millions players.... and so on. Your opinion is biased and not standing on right place.

EA have lot of great games behind it. Let just mention Battlefield series, MassEffect series, Sims series, Sim City series ... You can't just ignore that all because of ?????? not sure what?

Every one who is not happy with something have rights to make his own company and make things better. I am satisfy with current EA and can't wait to play BF4 as BF3 is great game.

Burning
2013-04-11, 15:39
I'll try to break this down.



This is why I find it mind boggling people still buy EA their crap. People still Pre-order games they know will be full of advertisements and micro-transactions trying to milk you for money. *Pre-order games they know nothing about *cough bf4 *cough* Orgin literally states : BONUS CONTENT (????? ) EXPANSION PACK (????) *What bonus content? A new hat for your singleplayer soldier? a extra single use grenade? What DLC? 2 extra maps @ 15$ ?
It's like buying a dvd from a unknown man on the street "NOO MAN, trust me, this is awesome, just give me 60$ and I promise it will be cool whats on this disc"...

Don't people learn, or care about the future of their (loved) series. Or do people simply not realize their wallets are the only thing that can make a difference...


Well, i understood this personal and i am sick of this crap. You don't like game don't buy it. If i preorder game it is my problem. I didn't bought it because of "bonus grenade" or what ever but because of BF4.



If you say that like that i don't support good game series then just to get clear. When BETA come out and i notice it is crap (doubt it) i will cancel my preorder and that will hurt much more EA then if you didn't bought it as they will see how much money they are loosing.
Good point, they indeed see they are losing money. But when nobody pre-orders they also see they lost alot of costumers. As for the BETA thing. Good i support that. Remember though, bf3 alpha was great. No tint, good destruction and then they switched it to Beta, changed all sorts of stuff with no reason. Game was kinda decent. they launch game, they changed damage numbers etc , in short it sucked. EA will DO everything to ensure sales pre-launch. They will make the BETA awesome, they will promise you 50 dlc's for free etc. They will go do everything , trust me, so it is a very bad impression of the final product. Thats why you need to quit-pre ordering. pre - ordering was only there so if you turn to a shop, you dont return empty handed because they are sold out. Pre- ordering on digital platforms (aka orgin) is useless bullshit. It gains you NOTHING aside from the previously mentioned bonus crap. Which you didn't care about.

So my question now gisse (don't take this is as harsh critisim, I mean no offense, just want to know) Why you you pre-order this? If it isn't for the extra stuff? If it isn't to show you support and trust EA so much? Why not get the game a week after launch, you will know (unbiased) reviews. You will still be able to pick it up easily. You lose nothing, only gain. Well you lose the gimmick bonus shit they offer you.
Highly doubt BETA will be exclusive, Physical Warfare pack was "Exclusive". EA doesn't do exclusive.

What i mean by "Destroying a good series" *You still buy their products even when they make us pay for virtually everything, even when they didn't do shit about hackers in bf3. Even when BF3 is still buggy up to current day. That alone should be a reason to speak with your wallet and tell EA to go get their shit together if they want sales. Thats how I see it. I won't buy their new products pure out of principle that if I will, I am giving them a greenlight of costumers being ok what all this shit.


If you say it is same as BF3 well, BF3 was same as BF2 and all other FPS games as you are running around and shooting and killing something. Does that make BF3 or any other FPS game clone of "Wolfenstain 3D"?

Battlefield 3 WAS NOT(!!) like Battlefield 2. I doesn't even compare to Battlefield 2 on the lowest of levels. With bf3 they took core, perfectly working aspects of bf2 which nothing was wrong with (Commander, Battlerecorder, Spectator, 6 man squads, voip) and they just simply removed them. God fucking knows why. Maybe because the game needed to be easy to appeal to the mainstream clowns...
If Battlefield 3 was like Battlefield 2. There would be no issues in the first place. Game would be best game released in ages and people would happily look forward to Battlefield 4... But it wasn't ,EA fucked us Battlefield Veterans in exchange of BC2 players and peopel coming from other games. In addition, EA flat out lied to us telling there would be battlerecorder, and spectator mode. telling us PC was lead platform, telling us they wouldn't charge for mappacks (End-Game is just a bloody fucking mappack with reskinned quadbikes ok,...)
None of that is true, they happily give people shortcut bundles and other shit. They happily ask 15 bucks for map-packs. They never put in spectator nor battlerecorder.
Also, PC lead platform EA? Why do we spend months waiting on our patches just so you can do a ridiculously expensive console patch aswell. Not to mention not lisining to the community, blue tint? Everybody hates it, NO WE WON'T REMOVE IT OUR DESIGNER IS A GENIOUS HE MADE THE GAME SO PRETTY BY PAITING IT BLUE, SO REALISTIC..
Or those god damn lensflares everywhere... YES I KNOW YOUR ENGINE CAN MAKE LENSFLARES, SO CAN UNREAL 3...


Fun fact: EA purposely didn't change ANYTHING for the PC version of Deadspace 3 because they feel "The experience on all platforms should be the same", I can't even start to say how much of a retard the guy who said this is...



This whole text is not about BF4 but about EA. EA have answered on all those accusation and in answer you could read lot of interesting things.
Sounds like EA has their head up their asshole. Take a look at facebook, *the "Omg i love this game" to "Its shit fix this EA you cunts" comment ratio is 3/10



Every big company have similar problem. I work fro DirecTV and my company have similar problem. You do tremendous job on something and your software don't do blowjob and suddenly all are unhappy.....

Haha, no company I know of has been doing this shit in this degree. SEGAE is excellent publisher, THQ was, Activision makes the same stuff but atleast keep their word , don't lie etc. Ubisoft same deal as Activision. Blizzard (part of activison) always deliverrs finished games, finished to the end. no matter how long it takes. Rockstar does the same. Valve makes quality stuff for low prices AND opensources.

EA ruined:

Mass effect
Crysis
Battlefield
Need for Speed
Deadspace
Simscity
Starwars the old republic (by cutting dev team in half post-launch)

All in 2 years, they turned their biggest best series in the cashcows with microtransactions, always online drm. Rushed endings, extreme bad support, cheating, bugs etc etc

All for the sake of sales.
Now look at this, i truely can't understand somebody wanting to support this company with their money.

I can rant hour and hour and hours about this, And I can get myself more pissed by the minute. So I won't for my own and you guys sake :)

Shadowfox
2013-04-11, 15:46
Buying BF3 in a box, still needs you to install Origin, thats what I ment by 'FORCING them'. There is NO way to play Simcity, MoH, BF, ... WITHOUT Origin so no wonder they have 45m users.

Diablo is a bad game too, they also use the 24/7 online as a DRM but that doesn't justify it. It's because one company does something stupid the rest have to do the same right?

I don't know about the P4F games. There are some good ones, I agree. BFP4F might be one of them, I have played CnC alliances though, and that game was fun at the start, now is dead because of the Pay2Win concept. So yeah, they still have many players, but not so many as before.

EA had lots of great games. BF3 is good, not great (although you will disagree ;)); Simcity is average; Mass Effect 3 was average; ... yes these games are fun sometimes but they aren't great games anymore, just average games or good games.

And yes, you are right, they do whatever they like with their company. In my eyes, they're destroying it slowly.

Burning
2013-04-11, 15:52
Buying BF3 in a box, still needs you to install Origin, thats what I ment by 'FORCING them'. There is NO way to play Simcity, MoH, BF, ... WITHOUT Origin so no wonder they have 45m users.

Diablo is a bad game too, they also use the 24/7 online as a DRM but that doesn't justify it. It's because one company does something stupid the rest have to do the same right?

I don't know about the P4F games. There are some good ones, I agree. BFP4F might be one of them, I have played CnC alliances though, and that game was fun at the start, now is dead because of the Pay2Win concept. So yeah, they still have many players, but not so many as before.

EA had lots of great games. BF3 is good, not great (although you will disagree ;)); Simcity is average; Mass Effect 3 was average; ... yes these games are fun sometimes but they aren't great games anymore, just average games or good games.

And yes, you are right, they do whatever they like with their company. In my eyes, they're destroying it slowly.

I agree, All EA play 4 free games are major Pay 2 win though. Also Battlefield P4F. With default guns and playing 100% free you'd have to play 10 hours a day to keep up with the pay people. Personally I like Play 4 Free, but it is major P2W anyway :) It's mind boggeling how much money people spend on this and I assume partly the reason why EA is so eager to make Play4Free Microtransaction games. If single individuals spend over 200 bucks on the game :P

@Gisse, they can do whatever they want. But that doesn't mean it will make them a succesful company. They will destroy themselves this way.

EDIT:
I might add, that if EA changes their policies and manages to bring out a true battlefield 2 succesor, I am in ofcourse. Even though I think of this as Highly unlikely..

Gisse
2013-04-11, 16:06
i still can't find where they promised battlerecorder and spectator mode for BF3.

All what they promised to me i got. One free DLC and some guns if i am not wrong.

Also to tell you one big secret ;) I am currently in Ukraine, here BF4 cost 34 Euros. When i move to Serbia it will cost me 50 Euros or how much it cost you.

Price is high as we didn't get used to it. 50 Euros is approximately one good night out.

Burning
2013-04-11, 16:30
i still can't find where they promised battlerecorder and spectator mode for BF3.

All what they promised to me i got. One free DLC and some guns if i am not wrong.

Also to tell you one big secret ;) I am currently in Ukraine, here BF4 cost 34 Euros. When i move to Serbia it will cost me 50 Euros or how much it cost you.

Price is high as we didn't get used to it. 50 Euros is approximately one good night out.

It wasn't a lousy pre-order promise.
It was promises made by various dice employees long time before launch in various interviews and blogs..
50 euros one good night out? dafuq?
I thought liquor was cheap in those kind of countries:O
I pay average of 30 -35 a night here in the netherlands. Sometimes less.

Vercetti
2013-04-11, 17:21
TL;DR, Let's go and kill some noob or mine some blocks!

Burning
2013-04-11, 17:33
TL;DR, Let's go and kill some noob or mine some blocks!
Can except these discussions with topics like these. :wink:
DEAL WITH IT™ Â*8)

Gisse
2013-04-11, 18:47
i still can't find where they promised battlerecorder and spectator mode for BF3.

All what they promised to me i got. One free DLC and some guns if i am not wrong.

Also to tell you one big secret ;) I am currently in Ukraine, here BF4 cost 34 Euros. When i move to Serbia it will cost me 50 Euros or how much it cost you.

Price is high as we didn't get used to it. 50 Euros is approximately one good night out.

It wasn't a lousy pre-order promise.
It was promises made by various dice employees long time before launch in various interviews and blogs..
50 euros one good night out? dafuq?
I thought liquor was cheap in those kind of countries:O
I pay average of 30 -35 a night here in the netherlands. Sometimes less.

Various dice employees are not official news from EA and DICE so you can't count it.

No mate, good club is 5 euros drink at least .... Â*On street is cheap, 3 euros liter of cheap vodka.

Burning
2013-04-12, 00:07
i still can't find where they promised battlerecorder and spectator mode for BF3.

All what they promised to me i got. One free DLC and some guns if i am not wrong.

Also to tell you one big secret ;) I am currently in Ukraine, here BF4 cost 34 Euros. When i move to Serbia it will cost me 50 Euros or how much it cost you.

Price is high as we didn't get used to it. 50 Euros is approximately one good night out.

It wasn't a lousy pre-order promise.
It was promises made by various dice employees long time before launch in various interviews and blogs..
50 euros one good night out? dafuq?
I thought liquor was cheap in those kind of countries:O
I pay average of 30 -35 a night here in the netherlands. Sometimes less.

Various dice employees are not official news from EA and DICE so you can't count it.

No mate, good club is 5 euros drink at least .... *On street is cheap, 3 euros liter of cheap vodka.
O no man ,this was "offical", said by their community manager guy (Zhinto back then) and some others aswell.
Also they repeated it in various interviews. just not one. It was certainly something not just 1`employee said. I think DICE wanted it like this, but then new EA CEO's said NO. But ofcourse EA removed all this stuff from their site. Not surprising. either way they have said it,Take my word for it. And by the amount of times it gets mentioned in various topics on various forums you can be assured I ain't the only one who has seen those videos :)

As for the clubs, i feel sorry for you. Here, good club drinks are 2.30 or such (for beer, more for other stuff). 5 euros is really expensive, *3 euro for liter of vodka is indeed insane. Here a bottle at a liquor store is like 20 euros or so (1 liter bottle). Not sure though.

Gisse
2013-04-12, 07:29
It is possible. But is battle recorder so important feature? I know that there is in BF2. Newer use it to be honest. And spectator mode is what exactly? Just "ghosting" around map?


That cheap vodka is one from which you can get blind ....

Gisse
2013-04-12, 08:04
I tried to find something about Spectator mode in BF3 and i got this. Just simple search in Google.

Spectator Mode and "BattleRecorder" Coming Soon to "Battlefield 3 (http://www.complex.com/video-games/2012/01/spectator-mode-and-battlerecorder-coming-soon-to-battlefield-3)

They got that idea from this

http://cdnl.complex.com/mp/620/400/80/0/bb/1/ffffff/4efb143f8fde9c7de3fa011cce682d99/images_/assets/CHANNEL_IMAGES/VIDEO_GAMES/2012/01/nationscup.jpg

Then in next link i got this guys: Battlefield 3 might be given a spectator mode (http://bf3blog.com/tag/battlefield-3-spectator-mode/)

And they got that idea from here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9p9PxPFsf2g

They say that it is future spectator mode????

Also those guys Battlefield 3: Spectator Mode, Battlelog features for spectator mode - first opinions on PS3 patch on 03/27/2012 (http://www.pcgames.de/Battlefield-3-PC-221396/News/Battlefield-3-Spectator-Mode-Battlelog-Funktionen-fuer-Zuschauermodus-Erste-Meinungen-zum-PS3-Patch-vom-27032012-875099/)

All because of those functions in battlelog:

platoonbattleteamsetup
platoonbattleteamsetup-spectators
invitedTeamLeaders
platoonbattle
team1Roster
team2Roster
SPECTATOR_ADDED
SPECTATOR_KICKED
ID_WEB_PLATOONBATTLE_COMINGSOON_HEADER_ "
MaxSpectators
Platoon Demoted
matches / betasignup /

Those guys also
Battlefield 3 spectator mode and e-sports features teased by latest Battlelog update (http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/04/02/battlefield-3-spectator-mode-and-e-sports-features-teased-by-latest-battlelog-update/)

I couldn't find single link in blogs connected with gaming which even mentioned with some real evidence that DICE ever mentioned Spectator mode or battlerecorder.

Please if you have link post it i would really like to read it.

Burning
2013-04-12, 13:48
I tried to find something about Spectator mode in BF3 and i got this. Just simple search in Google.

Spectator Mode and "BattleRecorder" Coming Soon to "Battlefield 3 (http://www.complex.com/video-games/2012/01/spectator-mode-and-battlerecorder-coming-soon-to-battlefield-3)

They got that idea from this

http://cdnl.complex.com/mp/620/400/80/0/bb/1/ffffff/4efb143f8fde9c7de3fa011cce682d99/images_/assets/CHANNEL_IMAGES/VIDEO_GAMES/2012/01/nationscup.jpg

Then in next link i got this guys: Battlefield 3 might be given a spectator mode (http://bf3blog.com/tag/battlefield-3-spectator-mode/)

And they got that idea from here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9p9PxPFsf2g

They say that it is future spectator mode????

Also those guys Battlefield 3: Spectator Mode, Battlelog features for spectator mode - first opinions on PS3 patch on 03/27/2012 (http://www.pcgames.de/Battlefield-3-PC-221396/News/Battlefield-3-Spectator-Mode-Battlelog-Funktionen-fuer-Zuschauermodus-Erste-Meinungen-zum-PS3-Patch-vom-27032012-875099/)

All because of those functions in battlelog:

platoonbattleteamsetup
platoonbattleteamsetup-spectators
invitedTeamLeaders
platoonbattle
team1Roster
team2Roster
SPECTATOR_ADDED
SPECTATOR_KICKED
ID_WEB_PLATOONBATTLE_COMINGSOON_HEADER_ "
MaxSpectators
Platoon Demoted
matches / betasignup /

Those guys also
Battlefield 3 spectator mode and e-sports features teased by latest Battlelog update (http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/04/02/battlefield-3-spectator-mode-and-e-sports-features-teased-by-latest-battlelog-update/)

I couldn't find single link in blogs connected with gaming which even mentioned with some real evidence that DICE ever mentioned Spectator mode or battlerecorder.

Please if you have link post it i would really like to read it.

Sigh...
Zhinto isn't community manager anymore, nations cup was after he lost that position, so he can say that indeed without problems, which he couldn't as community managers.

about 3 months before alpha there was a blog on blog.battlefield.com explaining all sorts of stuff they were doing with bf3. How it would be true bf2 succesor, how it would have a battlerecorder etc etc all this stuff
and indeed they mentioned Battlerecorder to watch back your live footage Â*and share it with your friends and a spectator mode.

Also ,the video you posted shows a working spectator mode. The Caspian borderlaunch trailer showed that they indeed have tools to make panoramic views and the like. Yet they don't implent them. Why? Why promise something, then make it, and not give it to us... Its just bullshit

And no, that blog has cleverly been edited by EA to cover up their lies, same goes for the IGN interview. Nowhere to be found.

EA is not stupid , they lie about stuff and then cover it up.. and you expect to find any proof of it? Search the stuff they left out of Armored Kill, the stuff they marketed as featured therfor selling us something that didn't exist.
The fact you could take vehicle perks back to the base game.
They cleverly removed that from the advertisement pictures after launch of armored kill. Search that, I am sure you can find stuff there.
Also look at
MordorHQ forums. The true heart of the Battlefield community..
You will find stuff there.

Gisse
2013-04-12, 14:42
It is not Spectator mode it is this. (http://blog.allenthinks.com/?p=277)

Here is guy which say that Premium will be free.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTdTs7dNgbk

Reading this currently LINK (http://www.mordorhq.com/showthread.php?3880-The-True-Story-of-Battlefield-3-the-Battlefield-Franchise-Its-Community-amp-EA-DICE)

Burning
2013-04-12, 17:16
Good read that is..
Mordor nails everything right that and that topic is all the reason why Bf3/Dice/ea utterly failed in providing us with a true battlefield experience..

Also, NO i am not talking about the mod. I am talking about there being spectator files and shit in the battlefield files that have been patched out a long time ago.
There was an official spectator/cam mode. How do you think DICE makes the Caspian Border trailer or such? Using mods the community made? Don't think so. Look ,if you don't want to believe it, fine. There were such tools, they were promised, DICE never gave them to us.
Look at the Armored kill stuff, just removing marketed material with no explanation.

What exactly are you trying to proof/say gisse? That what I say is not correct and no such thing has been ever promised? I heard/saw it with my own ears/eyes.
I don't fully understand what you are trying to achieve?

Burning
2013-04-12, 17:19
Here is guy which say that Premium will be free.

He says there will be the same features as Call of Duty Elite (advanced stat tracking and gun statistics etc) but free. Which is true more or less. Even though plugins like BetterBattlelog are needed to make full use of it.

Gisse
2013-04-12, 18:56
Good read that is..
Mordor nails everything right that and that topic is all the reason why Bf3/Dice/ea utterly failed in providing us with a true battlefield experience..

Also, NO i am not talking about the mod. I am talking about there being spectator files and shit in the battlefield files that have been patched out a long time ago.
There was an official spectator/cam mode. How do you think DICE makes the Caspian Border trailer or such? Using mods the community made? Don't think so. Look ,if you don't want to believe it, fine. There were such tools, they were promised, DICE never gave them to us.
Look at the Armored kill stuff, just removing marketed material with no explanation.

What exactly are you trying to proof/say gisse? That what I say is not correct and no such thing has been ever promised? I heard/saw it with my own ears/eyes.
I don't fully understand what you are trying to achieve?

I want to find where they promised that. No more or less.

(so i can go on trial with them Â*:twisted: )

Shadowfox
2013-04-13, 09:38
Well Gisse, good luck finding it. As Burning said, they covered it up quite well (probably to not have the problem of trials ;))

Anyway Gisse, the stuff Burning says is true, because I read that BEFORE buying BF3 aswell.