Peter Moore, Electronic Arts Chief Operating Officer, has posted a news article in response to the company being up for winning “Worst Company in America” for a second year. Peter Moore says that the company “can do better”.
[flickr id=”8623592588″ thumbnail=”medium” overlay=”false” size=”medium” group=”” align=”center”]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. 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. 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. That debate takes place in bars – our audience lives on the Internet. So no surprise that we drew more votes there.
Let me cut to the chase: it appears EA is going to “win.” 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?” 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. 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:
- Many continue to claim the Always-On function in SimCity is a DRM scheme. It’s not. People still want to argue about it. We can’t be any clearer – it’s not. Period.
- Some claim there’s no room for Origin as a competitor to Steam. 45 million registered users are proving that wrong.
- Some people think that free-to-play games and micro-transactions are a pox on gaming. Tens of millions more are playing and loving those games.
- 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…
- 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. 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. If that’s what makes us the worst company, bring it on. Because we’re not caving on that.
We are committed to fixing our mistakes. Over the last three weeks, 900,000 SimCity players took us up on a free game offer for their troubles. We owed them that. We’re constantly listening to feedback from our players, through our Customer Experience group, Twitter, this blog, or other sites. The feedback is vital, and impacts the decisions we make.
I expect the debate will include a lot of comments under this post. 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. We will do better. 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. At EA we remain proud and unbowed.
I know that this kind of talk is easy but from all the stuff I’ve been seeing I do actuay believe it. More transparency from Maxis and top EA people giving their thoughts is a good direction and great to see. In the end I think sales figures and the people that play their games are finally talking and being heard. Good on you EA!
I honestly don’t have a large opinion one way or another about EA; I know that I write for a fansite and enjoy it a lot, and I enjoy playing video games on my computer and consoles… BUT I do have other things that I can entertain myself with. Some people take their arguments a little far online about EA and I think they do so because they have the guise of anonymity online (and because a large number seem to go with the flow).
That said, strictly from a ‘writer perspective’ or something, his response has a couple things off with it:
He spends a greater amount of time either distracting the reader from the topic with mudslinging of their opponents or by chumming it up with us. Pick one way or the other; it’s odd doing both in the same breath.
The number of people who took up the free game offer is strange to me, and that’s not EA’s fault–just an observation. I really wasn’t in to any of the games offered but hey, it’s still free! I’m just surprised that not many chose one.
A couple of things I hate when people write include excessive use of punctuation (seriously detest exclamation points for example) and overuse of a word. In this case, the culprit is the word ‘millions’ in regard to ‘how many people play this game and this game and all of our games and who won’t vote.’ It’s done to expand the word count and offers no additional information that by using commas and grouping like topics together.
Way too long for a comment, but I had my own thoughts. Again, really not anti-EA, just anti-thisguy’swritingstyle. Or his secretary’s 🙂
I did post a comment on the proper thing, and I’ll go back and see if anybody replied to my reply.
I wouldn’t actually vote on the worst company in America, for one not American. For two, I don’t truly believe EA is the worst company in America.
I think they need to re-examine some of their business practices, help the MAC users, especially where TS3 is concerned, get better customer services and stop trying to put their games online. I did say something about instead of saying they can do better, prove they can and to stop treating customers like we’re brainless.
I’ll stand by that, but I honestly don’t believe they’re the worst company. Ppl tend to let little grieviances build up and hit out where possible.
For my part:
– I don’t care that the always online requirement for SimCity isn’t DRM. What I care about is that requirement likely dictated the smaller city sizes, the impossibility of loading a previous savegame or making backups of our savegames, the fact the game is unplayable with flaky (or no) internet connection, the fact it prevents modding, etc. For all those reasons and a few more the new SimCity is not worth playing for me, which equates to, at least in my eyes, ruining a franchise I loved.
– I don’t care about the fact Origin exists and competes with Steam. I care about the fact Origin’s DRM seems to be way more obnoxious than Steam’s, that Origin doesn’t offer some of the really useful features of Steam such as the Workshop and the Linux client, that EA is choosing to not let it’s new games be sold on Steam. Also, I’ve already chosen one DRM-ladden digital distribution service, likely for life; I won’t let a second such DRM-ladden service be installed on my computer. Unless either Origin becomes DRM-free or Steam dies out, there’s no chance of me ever installing Origin, and by extension any game that requires Origin to be installed. (DRM-free distribution systems are exempt from this rule; I have purchased dozens of GOG games and have the GOG client installed, and would purchase games and install the client of any other such DRM-free distribution service if the games interest me and the price is right.)
– I don’t care about the fact F2P and DLCs exist; I care about the fact DLC exists for already full price games, the fact F2P games attempt to nickel and dime me, the fact in such games I can’t choose to pay the price of a full game for the full experience.
I found it too was worded oddly, but to make a post like THAT on their own site is a very, pardon my language, ballsy move. They could have simply posted a nice little civil thing mentioning not to vote for them, or something. Instead he, or someone posing as him, posted an almost emotion driven post. Which gained my respect because it takes guts to admit that not only did you do wrong, but actually mentioning your faults and saying you are trying. But I would not blame other places for the votes, if you are doing wrong the majority is by your fault, I highly doubt some LGBT bashing people are the majority, sure they make an impact but that does not mean that they are the reason for the vote being bad.
I think getting it a second year in the row might actually help them. If they get it again they are going to be saying
“Well damn, we need to step it up, we can’t get it again, that won’t look good for us at all”
And they know their opponents in the gaming industry will use that against them, because they won’t miss a chance to watch the giant fall.
So it will maybe help them see that they need to put more effort and work into their games and make sure that the players get a more enjoyable time.
I for one am loyal to EA, I know they make their mistakes, but I love the Sims 3, and if that means dealing with some problems than fine, I would love it if it was perfect, but we don’t live in that kind of world, my sims do, but not us.
^^”My Sims do, but not us.”
Pretty much my favourite line right now Corey, and I completely agree with it!
I have two points to make in concerning this article. The first is that what Corey said about EA acknowledging the ‘worst company’ award will be used by their opponents is correct. By EA acknowledging this award they are taking one of their opponents moves away from them. Basically they are taking the ‘air out of their opponents balloon’. At the same time it is getting a lot of sympathy for them from their customers. Basically it was a good business move! The second point is that EA, being such a big game company they will get a lot of complaints. People have higher expectations for them than they have for a smaller company. I know that I do! Because my expectations are higher for EA I find that I’m willing to complain more and that I don’t make excuses for them. I can honestly say that my reaction to other companies are different. I’m more apt to keep my mouth (typing fingers) quiet. I’ll make excuses for them including their customer service. With that being said, I find that when I call customer service for EA I am treated better than I do when I send them an email. I’ve even been told by an EA representative to try to always call. Which I now do!
Maybe there’s hope for Sims 4 not being an online only, DRM bug-ridden program?
@Maple
Thank you, and I tend to almost be using that as a catch phrase, for my sims live in a world where possessions are unimportant, Politics can be settled by a promotion, and love is everlasting, yet again. My sims do, but not us.
Test to see if my account works…