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EA: The Human Story (2004)

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Re: EA: The Human Story (2004)

#31

Post by 5350-uiop-1130 »

snet0 wrote: post #27
branon wrote: post #3

EA perpetuates practices that hurt customers, too. I used to unapologetically pirate video games and only within the past two years have I finally come full circle and begun purchasing games, both new titles and older ones I had played in the past but never paid for until now. Steam has been the tool of choice for this reconciliation process. As a result, some of the hardships that paying customers encounter have bec…

This reminds me of something Gabe Newell famously said about Steam. > "We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after t…

Afaik only GOG sells games without DRM. I have bought EA/Ubishit games on Steam which when you open the game, it installs Origin/UbiWhatever and then run through them only.

Re: EA: The Human Story (2004)

#32

Post by wanderingmoose »

chubot wrote: post #14

FWIW I was part of the class in the resulting class action lawsuit, and got a settlement check for about $30K in 2005 I also got a ~$5K settlement check from Google around 2012 due to the illegal Steve Jobs - Eric Schmidt anti-poaching agreement, another class action lawsuit

I was part of both as well.

I don't condone any of EA's behavior at the time, but the lawsuit benefited the lawyers way more than the artists and developers. I wish there was a resolution to the situation that allowed EALA to continue as a major studio. The talent there was amazing. Some of the blue sky projects that never made it to production were really interesting.

Unfortunately -- lawyers got paid. EA made some rule/structure changes. And EALA lost most of its square footage to a 24 hour fitness. Makes me sad everytime I drive by.

Re: EA: The Human Story (2004)

#33

Post by dleslie »

5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #31
snet0 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of something Gabe Newell famously said about Steam. > "We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after t…

Afaik only GOG sells games without DRM. I have bought EA/Ubishit games on Steam which when you open the game, it installs Origin/UbiWhatever and then run through them only.

A few years ago Steam began showing labeling on store pages for games that use third party DRM; and if you buy a game that has it and you did so unwittingly, then you can return it without issue provided you played less than two hours and you bought it within the last two weeks.

Re: EA: The Human Story (2004)

#34

Post by dleslie »

cupofpython wrote: post #25
branon wrote: post #3

EA perpetuates practices that hurt customers, too. I used to unapologetically pirate video games and only within the past two years have I finally come full circle and begun purchasing games, both new titles and older ones I had played in the past but never paid for until now. Steam has been the tool of choice for this reconciliation process. As a result, some of the hardships that paying customers encounter have bec…

>I don't see why competent studios like Blizzard/BioWare/Id could not simply self-publish their games related to this is how the games are managed once installed as well. Each studio is moving towards each having their own "Hub" for their games. Usually it is referred to as a "Launcher", but I dont think it is going to end there. For example, Blizzard has "Battle.net". You open battlenet, log in to battle net, and th…

That's not the future, that's basically now for any Ubisoft games.

Re: EA: The Human Story (2004)

#36

Post by dleslie »

whatshisface wrote: post #29
thatguy0900 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

would gamepass be the closest to that? The other alternative would be games being small indie projects or huge community things. The mods people release for free are sometimes pretty insane in scope, even if Noone ever paid for a game again we'd still get some decent games at least

Gamepass would be cable for videogames, PBS for videogames would be a government agency that made them.

The government of Canada funds the development of a fair amount of video games through the Canadian media fund.

Re: EA: The Human Story (2004)

#37

Post by maccard »

hvs wrote: post #12

This blog post is from 18 years ago so I'd be curious if any game developers can speak to the current state of affairs in the industry. It's always been notorious for overworking employees, but I'm not sure if it's to the same scale described here.

Things have dramatically improved in the last 18 years. That's not to say that crunch doesn't happen, or that there aren't studios that abuse their employees, but large companies like EA have all moved past this death march for months model. Ubisoft is generally considered to be an excellent employer - reasonable pay, good work life balance and career/progression systems available for everyone. It's still not perfect, but 8ts not this!

Re: EA: The Human Story (2004)

#38

Post by xbar »

synu wrote: post #8

This was while John Riccitiello was running EA. I was there at the time and it was crazy how many people were being driven so hard. You may recognize his name now from the recent Unity/malware merger news, or maybe from calling developers who don’t extract maximum value through microtransactions “fucking idiots.”

He is why I never worked at EA.

Re: EA: The Human Story (2004)

#39

Post by swivelmaster »

hvs wrote: post #12

This blog post is from 18 years ago so I'd be curious if any game developers can speak to the current state of affairs in the industry. It's always been notorious for overworking employees, but I'm not sure if it's to the same scale described here.

Some places are still like this. EA is not. I worked at a company that was acquired by EA in late 2011 and stayed until 2016. Post-acquisition, EA's HR folks made sure that a whole bunch of the studio's staff were properly classified (salary vs. hourly) and that the studio was following proper procedure regarding timecards and overtime. The studio also hired on some senior staff to deal with operations and production practices.

There were still some bad times - politics outside of the studio forced staff into some do-or-die milestones that required crunching for a week or two at a time, but nothing like the kind of sustained months-to-years crunch I've heard about in other places.

The funny thing about EA is that even though it has such a bad rap for making big mistakes in the past, they made them FIRST and have managed to learn. A lot of other major publishers that grew to comparable size more recently are still making them.

Re: EA: The Human Story (2004)

#40

Post by 0x500x79 »

I see that "Vote with your feet" got downvoted in the thread, but it's true. I worked for another one of the large game studios in the US for a long time. The practices employed at the game studio were built around keeping people attached to their jobs because they love video games and loved the games we built. It was weaponized excessively.

Almost every town-hall, all-hands, etc was framed around the product and keeping players happy (we need to deliver this by this date so you have to crunch). The hiring pool was primarily people that played the games we developed and there was some psychological warefare going on that attempted to prevent attrition based on building what you loved.

The quote from the article is: > No one works in the game industry unless they love what they do.

This is pretty true and can be very toxic in your "job". My advice: Don't love what you do for work THAT much. Keep a bit of a disconnect and live your life still. In the modern tech industry you can leave, you can find a job that treats you well, don't make your identity a "video game developer on X game" because that is a recipe for burnout.

The issues that stemmed from this are impossible to outline. People made subpar decisions, dealt with inhumane conditions and harassment, took lower pay, and at the end of the day has caused REAL harm in the industry (suicides, trauma, etc). We need to be better and hold these companies accountable from every aspect of not buying games, not working there, and attempt to make the industry better.

I left my stint at video games and went to a different company. The pay is better, the working conditions are better, my thoughts are not stifled because of internal politics.

The industry has changed quite a bit since 2004. During that time publishers were key and many times deadlines were set by the next "drop" for the publisher, but many of the problems with the industry have stayed around and video games are not worth it.

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