#oneaday Day 687: E for Exploitative, A for Arseholes

EA and I are done. I will not be purchasing any of their future titles (with the possible exception of BioWare titles — though even those are becoming prone to the problem I’m about to describe) and I think the world should pay attention to what they’re up to, rather than simply letting them get away with it.

What, then, is their sin?

Exploitation of consumers, to put it in simple, general terms. This accusation covers a variety of unpleasant behaviour, and none of it is good for people who like playing games and holding on to their money. Let’s delve into these things one at a time.

Origin

Let’s start with EA’s digital distribution platform Origin. I don’t have a problem with digital distribution platforms which aren’t Steam, but EA needs to accept that I, along with many other gamers out there, choose to rely on Steam for the vast majority of our PC gaming needs.

There are a variety of reasons for this, not least of which is Steam’s ubiquity and social functionality. If you want to see what your friends are up to in an Xbox Live style, chances are, you’ll be able to see via Steam. Most people even add their non-Steam games to their Steam library, so you’ll always be able to see what they’re up to.

Origin has designs on this too, with its own integrated social functionality, but no facility to add non-Origin games. And given that the platform launched with only EA titles, few people are going to want to switch to Origin as their primary means of communicating with friends during gameplay. It’s just silly to try. Steam works, no pun intended. It works well. That’s why it’s popular.

Alongside this, there’s the shady business of EA removing its titles from Steam on the grounds of mysterious, non-specific “policies” that supposedly no other digital distribution services impose on poor little EA. Funny how these objections only arose shortly after Origin showed up.

And then there’s the fact that increasing numbers of people are reporting that they’re losing access to their games — even single-player titles — following often wrongful bans from the EA forums. Granted, some people who have been in touch deserved a forum ban (come on, do you really think making your username “TheGreatRapist” is really going to depict you as a fine, upstanding member of the community?) but even then, there is no way that behaviour on forums should prevent people from accessing the content they have paid for. Rock, Paper, Shotgun is running a good investigation into the matter at present.

And then there’s EA’s stubbornness even when it comes to online games. In their recent mobile releases (which we’ll come on to shortly) all online functionality is handled not through Game Center which is, let’s not forget, built in to iOS, but instead through Origin. This has the ridiculous side-effect of meaning that you can’t use the Game Center app to do things like check high scores or compare games — something which it is designed for.

Anyway. Enough about Origin — except for the fact that EA’s adoption of that particular name is like rubbing dirt into the good name of Origin Systems, who produced some of the finest games ever created.

Project Ten Dollar

This is all the rage now, and not just with EA. I blame EA for introducing it, however, since it was they who talked about it first. But it is not cool to lock off content from full-price games, whether it’s single player or multiplayer. If I pay £40/$60 for a new game, I damn well expect to get what I paid for on the disc without having to enter a selection of alphanumeric codes. And if I buy a used copy of the game, I likewise expect to get full access to the game. People don’t tear out the last five chapters of a second-hand book, people don’t erase five random scenes from a second-hand DVD. So why should a game be gutted for those of us who didn’t want to buy it new, whether that’s due to financial constraints or simply being unable to find a new copy?

An episode of Extra Credits had a good solution for this which would be perfectly palatable to me. If they must lock off content, then charge less for the game in the first place. Sell me a disc with the single player gameplay on for considerably less than $60 and charge me an additional $15-20 for the multiplayer mode — a $15 to $20 that I don’t feel obliged to pay, largely because I rarely play multiplayer modes, anyway — particularly in games that don’t need them.

As it is, Online Passes are a transparent method of fleecing more money out of consumers. They are indefensible.

Drip-Feed DLC

This largely relates to BioWare games. I would much rather have a full-on expansion pack for $15-20 than drip-fed DLC which often adds very little to the experience. The few pieces of Dragon Age DLC I’ve played really weren’t worth the money — they didn’t even integrate with the main campaign — and they’ve put me off checking out Mass Effect 2‘s offerings.

Part of this is for pricing reasons. But part of it is, again, due to the fact that I’d much rather have the whole game up front. In the case of Mass Effect 2, why not hold the release back and include the content in the game? Answer: because it makes more money, which is kind of the root of all these problems. Money-making trumps consumer convenience and goodwill every time.

Thar Be Whales!

By far the most obnoxious behaviour that EA has been indulging in recently relates to its mobile games. First of all, they updated their iOS version of Tetris. This is not, in and of itself, a bad thing. All iOS developers update their games fairly regularly, whether that’s with bugfixes or additional content. And, for the most part, buying that app in the first place means that developer is happy to provide additional content to you for free throughout the product’s active development lifecycle.

Not so with EA. They removed the original version of Tetris from the App Store before replacing it with the new version, meaning that even people who had already bought the original and wanted to take advantage of the new features had to pay again. Dishonest.

Couple that with the fact that the game has added compulsive, manipulative social game features such as an utterly meaningless “rank bar” and virtual currency — both of which you can pay real money to jack up at a higher rate — as well as a subscription option (for Tetris! Seriously!) and you get something altogether unpleasant.

Then there’s Theme Park. Theme Park was a brilliant strategy/building game which many people would love to play again today in its original form. It doesn’t need anything changing. But no — EA decided that it really needs to be a gameplay-free social game, complete with aforementioned compulsive, manipulative mechanics such as an XP bar and purchasable virtual currency. Not only that, though, but some of the rides in the game cost up to $100 of real money to purchase. Let that sink in for a moment. To buy certain attractions in Theme Park, you need to pay more than the cost of one and a half full-price console titles.

The trouble is, there are just enough idiots out there who have more money than sense who will pay these ludicrous prices just to be “the best”. These people are unaffectionately known as “whales”, for obvious reasons — and it only takes a few of them to make such a business strategy worthwhile.

In all, I’m pretty ashamed of EA right now, and have no desire to give them any of my money for the foreseeable future. The trouble I have is that they’re swallowing up otherwise reputable companies like BioWare and forcing them to fit in with their shady business practices. I have no doubt that Mass Effect 3 will be a great game, but I also know that it will have an Online Pass, it will doubtless have a “robust post-release DLC strategy”, it will surely cut out content from the main game to sell back to me at a later date, and it will almost certainly only be available on Origin for PC.

I long for the days when EA were the ones with the funny logo that looked like EOA, and they make games like M.U.L.E. and Racing Destruction Set. I know you can’t go back, but you can move in a direction which doesn’t make you look like you just want to squeeze your customers for every penny they’ve got, rather than provide them with quality entertainment.

In summary: sod off, EA. Get back to me when you’ve had some humble pie.

Talking Point: What do you do when a favourite developer (BioWare) is an cahoots with an organisation like EA? I like BioWare games, as I’ve said above. But I’m strongly tempted to not buy any more for the reasons outlined above. I certainly won’t be purchasing anything from Origin and especially if it’s an Origin exclusive. Competition is good. Removing your products from the competition (Steam) is not.