Boycotting EA...

missAran

Member
Maybe it's because I'm a socialist, maybe it's because I just don't like EA's business practices, but does anyone want to boycott the company? EA is swallowing companies left and right, just got exclusive rights to the NFL (and, rumor has it, NHL too). I'm just curious if people in here care about the industry or just want another Madden. Anyway, express interest or hatred for this idea. I haven't bought an EA game this generation merely because they don't appeal to me, but I have no problem making it official.
 
jetjevons said:
Burnout 3 is great.
Too bad Criterion sold themself. I'd like to play that game. Loved Burnout 2.

But since that game is EA's now I guess that'll never happen... :P
 
missAran said:
Maybe it's because I'm a socialist, maybe it's because I just don't like EA's business practices, but does anyone want to boycott the company? EA is swallowing companies left and right, just got exclusive rights to the NFL (and, rumor has it, NHL too).


dont blame EA, blame the NFL. If EA hadn't bought the rights, someone else would have stepped up.
 
I'm not sure that your idea would work. I don't think that a lot of people care how EA operates. More than enough people are going to buy the next NFS, Madden, Street, etc.
It's f'ed up that they're that worried about how well ESPN Football did this year.
 
Hotsuma said:
I'm not sure that your idea would work. I don't think that a lot of people care how EA operates. More than enough people are going to buy the next NFS, Madden, Street, etc.
Well, I know it's impractical and it's hard to get people to actually care about the industry as opposed to their entertainment, but whatever. It will be good in the long run, and hopefully it'll wake some people up.
 
http://boards.ea.com/messages?13@217.OtDfaUnbmxO.1@.ef3d319

for a laugh that is! :lol :lol :lol

see this topic.

Why does everyone think that the agreement is a bad thing?!

posted on Dec 14, 2004 5:43pm PST

I hear many people complaining that Madden will be worse now.

First of all, there will never be a bad Madden. It might not live up to your great expectations, but it will always be an enjoyable game.

Also, the people who make Madden are professional! They are not going to be lazy and slack off just because they will no longer have competition. They still want people to like the game so that they will sell more.

All this means is that they will have better video and audio in the game due to this agreement.

All we did is drove away all these ESPN fanatics away from our boards, and will make them buy the right game in the future.

:lol :lol :lol
 
missAran said:
Well, I know it's impractical and it's hard to get people to actually care about the industry as opposed to their entertainment, but whatever. It will be good in the long run, and hopefully it'll wake some people up.

I agree with that. Good luck with what you're trying to do.
 
When's the sit-in? The hunger strike? The march on EA? How about the tie-dye and singing of Kumbaya?

This isn't 1991 anymore. The face of the gaming consumer has changed, and they don't care how EA runs their business, as long as they get their sequels, violence, and sports games.
 
A boycott of EA-developed games for me would consist of giving up Tiger Woods and 007, which is no big loss.

EA-published games are another matter, though. In another thread today I said I'm boycotting all EA games with the exception of Timesplitters 3 (which has been my stance ever since the EA Spouse post, even though I didn't make any noise about it on the board). I argued that since Free Radical was developing TS3 before they cut a deal with EA, then they get a grandfather clause.

Anyhow--this gen's EA-developed games aren't appealing to me anyway. The funny thing is that the money I poured into EA's coffers in the late 1980s is in a very small part responsible for making them the evil but brilliant company they are today.
 
All we did is drove away all these ESPN fanatics away from our boards, and will make them buy the right game in the future.
Way to help EA in buying that exclusivity deal! Damn EA is smart, they make their own customers foot the bill!
 
Pirate all you want, that doesn't help EA. I'm all for pirating video games, honestly, frankly, I would pirate every single one of my games until prices start going down. $50 for a game is too much; but EA is a bigger problem than this.

For the sake of my personal morale, please be clear about whether or not you are going to boycott EA completely. This means published titles, too. Giving them no support is the idea.
 
I don't know what happened to the old thread, but I just read this on GS:

A source close to the negotiations said it was at a spring 2004 off-site meeting attended by top NFL officials that the league determined it would take the league license exclusive. GameSpot was told the league put the license up for bid and that EA was among as many as five software publishers competing for it. An EA spokesperson said today, "Obviously, exclusives are more expensive. We are most certainly paying a premium."

Now, maybe I'm mistaken, but it sounds like the NFL decided to make the license exclusive and shopped it around to the highest bidder. Now EA had a choice, either win it, or not have the NFL license for Madden next year. Can you blame EA in this case for getting the rights?
 
The NFL is a different story, sort of the camel that broke EA's back. EA has a long record of a lot of crap and it is getting too big. Here's a small encyclopedia entry from Wikipedia on EA:

EA is sometimes criticised as "the Microsoft of the games industry", specifically that they buy smaller development studios primarily for their intellectual property assets, and then make the developers produce run-of-the-mill games on these same franchises. For example, Origin produced Ultima VIII and Ultima IX: Ascension under EA's ownership, and these two are considered among the worst of the series, obviously aimed at lowest common denominator audience (Richard Garriott, the originator of the Ultima series, wasn't fond of EA at all, and previous Ultima games contained some subtle attacks on EA). In general, late productions have generally been not known for their originality.


Electronic Arts has from time to time been criticised for its employment policy of requiring employees to work extraordinarily long hours—up to 85 hours per week—as a general rule and not at just "crunch" times leading up to the scheduled releases of products. "The current mandatory hours are 9am to 10pm—seven days a week—with the occasional Saturday evening off for good behavior (at 6:30pm)"[1] . The company, as of late 2004, is facing a class action suit to pay for "unpaid overtime" it demanded of its employees[2].
 
nubbe said:
I have boycotted EA since 2001... With the exception of SSX...

Same for me. The only EA games I've got within the last 5 years are the original SSX and Burnout 3. They just have nothing that interests me besides those.
 
Once again a boycott on games that you don't want is normal. Everyone avoids buying bad games. The catch is not buying Madden, Burnout, SSX, Timesplitters, and EA's other quality titles.
 
< sigh >

espn2k5 = last football game i purchase in a long time...sucks too, cause id love to see the graphics VC would have pushed on the next consoles.

peace
 
Marty Chinn said:
I don't know what happened to the old thread, but I just read this on GS:



Now, maybe I'm mistaken, but it sounds like the NFL decided to make the license exclusive and shopped it around to the highest bidder. Now EA had a choice, either win it, or not have the NFL license for Madden next year. Can you blame EA in this case for getting the rights?


Yes, because they have been pushing and prodding the NFL for years on exclusitivity rights.

http://sports.ign.com/articles/572/572886p1.html


We (EA) have proposed exclusivity several times in the past, but this year, in the spring the NFL had an off-site meeting, and they decided to consider bids for exclusivity," Brown told IGN in an exclusive interview. "Several bids were submitted but they accepted EA's. I cannot tell you how much this cost, but exclusivity is expensive, we are paying a premium. It wasn't cheap. I can tell you this, though, all parties all happy with this agreement, and Wall Street seems happy with it too."
 
Kinda like being vegan ...

Can we just fire-bomb 'em and claim that it was violent acts in their games that influenced us??
 
missAran said:
Maybe it's because I'm a socialist, maybe it's because I just don't like EA's business practices, but does anyone want to boycott the company?
What does being a socialist have to do with anything?
 
Boo Fucking Hoo. Licenses dont make games great. I am not giving up SSX, TimeSplitters, Burnout or NFSU games unless they are killing kitties and they are not so FU you pro-pirating socialist. :)
 
Speaking as someone who boycotted Microsoft 100% for most of the 1990s, until MS Word finally crushed all competition on the Macintosh and forced me to capitulate--the only thing you can get from boycotting a juggernaut like EA is a sense of moral satisfaction.

If EA works its in-house programmers like dogs, I don't feel I can support that; if they re-release the same game each year at full price with minimal updates, I'd be a fool to support that. However, when EA widely distributes the work of small companies like Free Radical and leaves them to their own devices otherwise, then they're behaving like the old EA I remember, the one that played a major part in the growth of great companies like Interplay. I don't have a problem with that.
 
I don't see how any one can justify what EA has done. It sounds like VC put out a really great game this year and instead of competing with that, EA chose to block out other companies. How could the NFL go along with something like this? I thought they were all about parity? They might as well throw out the salary cap next year to go along with this bright idea to give exclusive right to one company.

WWE needs to let other companies create games as well. I'm sure someone can create or co-create a better wrestling product than THQ.
 
i will.

the only game currently they make that interests me is stranger forr xbox... and i'll find ways of playing that without giving them my money (guilt free too) ;)
 
TekunoRobby said:
Way to help EA in buying that exclusivity deal! Damn EA is smart, they make their own customers foot the bill!

You laugh, but EA could easily decide to pass some of the cost from that exclusivity deal to the consumer via price hikes and/or instituting online fees for PS2 Madden 2006 owners.
 
Hotsuma said:
WWE needs to let other companies create games as well. I'm sure someone can create or co-create a better wrestling product than THQ.
Funny enough, the prime canidate would be EA Canada/Aki.
 
missAran said:
Pirate all you want, that doesn't help EA. I'm all for pirating video games, honestly, frankly, I would pirate every single one of my games until prices start going down. $50 for a game is too much; but EA is a bigger problem than this.

For the sake of my personal morale, please be clear about whether or not you are going to boycott EA completely. This means published titles, too. Giving them no support is the idea.

Piracy is not going to lower prices...

At least Sony has made some effort and releases the majority of their first party games for $39.99 instead of $49.99...
 
I haven't purchased an EA game since the Strike series on the Genesis.

Guess there's not much more I can do.
 
Prospero said:
the only thing you can get from boycotting a juggernaut like EA is a sense of moral satisfaction.

Moral satisfaction is worth it alone.
 
Boycotting EA shouldn't be hard.

I mean, what's with you sports fans anyway? buying sports games year after year after year, with just statistical changes, a few visual tweaks and few improvements under the hood.

really, WTF is up with that!? are you guys sucker for having your money taken from you!? So yeah, now you got the sports games for this year, Why would you even need new ones at least until next gen hits? really. enlighten me. You cna't have 1 NFL game you have to have 5?
 
Why bother? Unless you're going to get a large percentage of the casual market (EA's core demographic) to boycott with you, EA's not going to care. Why deprive yourself of the occasional EA gem if your suffering is not going to have any impact on the situation? Sure, EA'd like the $50 that you're withholding from them, but they know that the people upset over this are probably not their core group anyway. They know that it's very likely that you're going to spend that money on a psychodelic big-eyed, blue haired Japanese niche title where you roll paper clips and legos into a big ball instead of buying the next Madden game.

Every nerd thinks he can change the world. :lol
 
mr2mike said:
really, WTF is up with that!? are you guys sucker for having your money taken from you!? So yeah, now you got the sports games for this year, Why would you even need new ones at least until next gen hits? really. enlighten me. You cna't have 1 NFL game you have to have 5?
I see you haven't played Winning Eleven/Pro Evolution Soccer. That's the only sportgame I buy.

I WILL NEVER SUCCUMB TO EA'S TRASH!
 
Slo said:
Why bother? Unless you're going to get a large percentage of the casual market (EA's core demographic) to boycott with you, EA's not going to care. Why deprive yourself of the occasional EA gem if your suffering is not going to have any impact on the situation? Sure, EA'd like the $50 that you're withholding from them, but they know that the people upset over this are probably not their core group anyway. They know that it's very likely that you're going to spend that money on a psychodelic big-eyed, blue haired Japanese niche title where you roll paper clips and legos into a big ball instead of buying the next Madden game.

Every nerd thinks he can change the world. :lol

IAWTP. Well said.
 
I have no interest in a boycott. Have fun storming the castle.

What does being a socialist have to do with anything?
I was wondering the same. Wouldn't a socialist welcome this most recent development with EA?
 
Boycott EA if you want it will get nothing done.

I hate what happened but now I'm forced to buy Madden for the next five years, whether I like the game or not. I NEED my yearly football fix and it has to be authentic. Don't even give me "You aren't forced to buy anything" argument because if you are a football fanatic and like videogames you need your yearly dose! I know every football fanatic will end up buying Madden 2006, no matter what you say right now. It isn't like Madden is a horrible game either. It is a great game but having another alternative is always nice. Now there are 0 alternatives. Releasing a football game without the NFLPA and NFL license is a joke.
 
Top Bottom