re:re: EA is just a vile, unethical heap of shit company.

[BabyHeadCrab]

Two lawsuits, one more serious (executives insider trading, selling thousands of shares prior to bf4)

Here's some data




And this little gem, a class action they already had on their hands for releasing an unplayable game for Sony/PC players.

one of the many sources

They just got successfully sued over Madden too.

 

[Omnomnick]

Hopefully this will be the last little push EA needs (off a cliff), and something like this actually forces them to re-evaluate their business and to finally work out the mystery of "quality actually matters".

 

[SpotEnemyBoats]

Their pursuit of the chasing CoD (DICE and Danger Close) is costing them, they killed my beloved MOH and BF series. All for a few extra shekels.

 

[Lobster]

The sad thing is that many of the really bad networking problems that the PC version had at launch were caused by a bottleneck in the server infrastructure. Game servers repeatedly got stuck trying to communicate with the central hub that handles all the player stats for the battle-log, which caused the game servers to repeatedly freeze and crash.

They made an official statement that they wouldn't work on any Downloadable Content until the launch problems were fixed, but seeing as the first three map packs were likely already finished (Second Strike was already out on Xbox, and China Rising was already entering premium early release on PC) it doesn't really mean anything. What the statement actually says is that the more obvious network issues would have naturally subsided by the time the third DLC pack is due to come out.

It is the exact same policy they had with the SimCity launch. They knew the first couple of weeks would be a crappy lag fest, and just figured it was worth weathering the problems rather than paying for greater infrastructure on day one.

I know that this is a common thing with online launches, nearly every new MMO launch tends to have problems with connectivity due to demand, but it really shouldn't be happening anymore. Not in 2013 with companies that put such high value in pre-order sales, that can presumably afford to prevent such problems.

I quite like how Guild Wars 2 handled things during its launch, freezing new purchases from its store, and granting CD key access to the servers in waves of players based on purchase date. It was honest about the limitations of the hardware, and kept people well informed of what was happening. While it wasn't perfect, it at least prevented people from wasting hours and hours in constant lag.