Ten years ago, Electronic Arts (EA) won the dubious honor of being America’s most hated company – twice. While he’s slipped rankings since he never seems too far from the occasional polemic or regular criticism for his practices.
This week, the company attempted to partake in a meme that is basically, “They’re a 10, but [insert something bad]”. To do this however, their official EA Twitter account sent: “It’s a 10, but they only like to play solo games.”
The tweet drew an immediate reaction not only from the general public, but also from many major players in the gaming industry, including some of its employees – and apparently none of the thousands of responses were kind.
The post got on a lot of nerves, including Zach Mumbach who was previously a producer at “Dead Space” developer Visceral Games (the studio that EA shut down in 2017). He said in a Tweeter:
“It’s the company that shut down my studio and fired about 100 major developers because we were doing a single-player game. Also, if you scale the game ratings down to a 10-point scale, most EA games get a solid 6 or 7. Not because the developers are bad, but because EA is forcing them to rush games. EA management wouldn’t know what a “10” looks like in video game terms.”
Others like Vince Zampella, the head of Respawn Entertainment who makes both multiplayer (“Apex Legends”) and singleplayer (“Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order”) hits for EA, replied to tweet with an appropriate facepalm emoji.
As Kotaku points out, the company’s growth has been “primarily achieved by doubling down on live multiplayer games…and finding new ways to monetize them through elaborate microtransaction shops, season passes, and loot boxes.” to loot”.
EA scrapped original “Uncharted” trilogy author Amy Hennig’s ambitious single-player “Star Wars” game, only to release “Star Wars: Battlefront II” with its paid loot boxes. This title has become a lightning rod for microtransaction controversy and sparked legislative scrutiny.
As some have pointed out, the tweet is particularly disconcerting given that some of EA’s most acclaimed titles to date are single-player titles, including BioWare’s “Mass Effect” and “Dragon Age” franchises; the “Dead Space”, “Crysis” and “SSX” franchises; and the likes of “Mirror’s Edge”, “Titanfall 2”, “The Sims 4” and most recently the aforementioned “Fallen Order”.
Additionally, some of their more recent multiplayer efforts, including “Anthem”, “Battlefield V”, and “Battlefield 2042”, have garnered heavy reviews and some of the worst user scores ever seen on aggregated sites like Metacritic. Following the outrage, EA tweeted: « Well deserved roast. We’ll take that L because playing single player games makes it an 11.”
Source: PC Gamer
