So after being voted worst company in America and writing a post "We Can Do Better" the only thing they acknowledge doing wrong is having the SimCity server crash. ... Companies like GitHub and Google write these posts monthly without such dramatic intros and PR fluff.
We Can Do Better
61–70 of 121 posts
Re: We Can Do Better
#62On the bright side, I don't think EA could possibly be as bad at game production as they are at public relations.
Re: We Can Do Better
#63This wasn't an apology, it was an excuse.
Re: We Can Do Better
#64For anyone wondering how the 'Worst Company in America' is decided upon, check here http://consumerist.com/2013/03/18/here-are-your-contestants-... . So it's basically a bracket. Not the most well-thought-out approach. Who picks the companies that are even eligible? Why not just have one big poll at the start? Even if they took that approach, I think it's clear EA would still 'win' since there is definitely a votebom…
Every year The Consumerist opens submissions for a week or two. Readers submit companies and the 16 finalists are chosen (not sure if it's pure numbers or there is some editorial discretion).
At that point it's all voting by readers.
It's easy for someone like EA to get high in a bracket like this. They've pissed off a lot of people who are active on the internet, and they've been against some easy targets. AnheiserBusch/InBev isn't a company that people line up to hate (unlike Walmart or some other perpetual nominees) and Facebook, despite often acting creepy as hell, is loved by millions and millions of people.
On the other hand, EA keeps making enemies; and their last dustup was just weeks before the content.
Re: We Can Do Better
#65I stopped reading right here: "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." He's flat out lying. I have no interest whatsoever in what he is saying. SimCity can technically run offline, gamers want to run it offline, but EA won't let you run it offline because you could then pirate their software.…
> SimCity can technically run offline,
Verifiable fact.
> gamers want to run it offline, but
Verifiable fact.
> EA won't let you run it offline
Verifiable fact.
> because you could then pirate their software.
Whoa, unsubstantiated conclusion there.
I think we don't actually know their motivations. For example, it could be as simple as they want to be able to sell stuff in-game, wanted to save development time by eliminating another configuration to test, push software upgrades and bugfixes, monitor your play time, resist cheaters, or eventually leverage players into an online social network. It could also be an anti-piracy DRM measure too of course.
Re: We Can Do Better
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suspect the argument is more "It's not DRM, it's amazing social interaction, that benefits everyone!" (read: Nobody would use it if it was optional)
I think I believe them: the game they wanted to make was one where the "continuous, integrated online world" was integral to the way people played SimCity: only the final product didn't do enough to justify their original intention.
But it is not a question about "belief" (unless you extrapolate that to mean future actions). SimCity has been hacked to demonstrate its completely offline nature.
Re: We Can Do Better
#67They could've "done better" by actually saying what they will do to improve things. This was an absolutely atrocious PR piece. It didn't address any of the issues people were having. "45 million registered users are proving them wrong." Such a goofy and useless statistic. When you require registration for your products, that doesn't mean people are satisfied users of your service, it means you got a lot of people to…
I'm not sure what your expectations are of a PR piece...do you want to see EA's KPI dashboard and development roadmap? Shareholders don't even see that, so why should you? And to be fair, I think a specific thing they mentioned was giving away SimCity for free to 900k users, that's not trivial. I actually really appreciated the honesty of this piece because I think it shows some integrity on EA's part to be willing t…
> giving away SimCity for free to 900k users
Just to clarify, he was referencing the free game offer to people who already bought SimCity. [1]
Re: We Can Do Better
#68They could've "done better" by actually saying what they will do to improve things. This was an absolutely atrocious PR piece. It didn't address any of the issues people were having. "45 million registered users are proving them wrong." Such a goofy and useless statistic. When you require registration for your products, that doesn't mean people are satisfied users of your service, it means you got a lot of people to…
"45 million registered users can't be wrong"
when you're misquoting people to make your point, maybe something is wrong with your argument. BTW I have no connection to EA and don't think I own any EA games.
Re: We Can Do Better
#69" 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."
This was by far the most aggravating part in his entire "Defense"(as in reading this made go to the consumerist and vote for them as the worst company in America)
Ok maybe he's right, maybe it's not DRM. He provides no proof of it but maybe he's right. What doesn't address was the always on line requirment, for whatever reason they decided it was necessary to put in the game, was broken making the game broken. Essentially they sold a broken product.
Re: We Can Do Better
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think I believe them: the game they wanted to make was one where the "continuous, integrated online world" was integral to the way people played SimCity: only the final product didn't do enough to justify their original intention.
But it is not a question about "belief" (unless you extrapolate that to mean future actions). SimCity has been hacked to demonstrate its completely offline nature. Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21802508
I've no doubt that it can run like that (and given SimCity works for ~30 mins or so without connecting to SimCity's servers, it's no shock to anybody who actually played the game at launch); but that doesn't mean that their intent when conceiving of the game wasn't for the online aspect to be utterly central and integral to how they wanted people to play the game. The always online "requirement" could absolutely have resulted from that desire rather than DRM.
If it was just a matter of DRM, then it's plain inconsistent with how they're approaching DRM with every other PC release they've done recently.