What's wrong with EA?

[HighCalibreHooch]

People, people, people - didn't you see the sign on your way in?!

"PLEASE DON'T FEED THE TROLLS
-Management"

 

[Malak]

Originally posted by: HighCalibreHooch
People, people, people - didn't you see the sign on your way in?!

"PLEASE DON'T FEED THE TROLLS
-Management"

I'm not the troll. Everyone who hates on EA is.

 

[futuristicmonkey]

Originally posted by: Malak

Originally posted by: futuristicmonkey
It's been working pretty good for me ever since I first got it, around when CS 1.6 came out, during the beta period. I've never had any issues with it that prevented me from playing a game on it. And you don't need to mention Friends because on that point alone I agree - I can only remember it working a few times ever.

Guess what? Others have. For one, the people trying to play a single player game where there is no internet. Guess what? Not everyone who has a computer has internet. And half the people that do are on dialup which is flaky. No company should require the internet for a stand-alone application. It requires nothing on the internet except some shaky application that slows load times for no apparent reason.

Speaking of which, benchmarks were put out when HL2 came out that proved Steam made the game run and load slower, a lot slower. All that for an application that downloads patches for you? Talk about a stupid good for nothing "convenience". To top it off, it can prevent you from playing. That's right! One time it told me Steam was too busy to let me play my damn game. I uninstalled HL2 shortly after getting it, almost threw the thing out. I will never buy another Valve game again. They gave me the finger, I closed my wallet.

I completely agree with what you are saying. There should be a way to streamline the offline mode. I say streamline because the idea of Steam was for authentication. It does seem to be a lot better (for Valve, not the pirates) than just the old cd-key in and play forever. Of course, we need to be realistic - Valve is never going to give up Steam.

I have no doubt that Steam impacts the performance of the game. When I first downloaded Steam I was running a Pentium@200MHz with 32mb of ram, etc..Steam made the games nearly unplayable for me. I would love to be able to separate the games from Steam after they have been updated (also, I'd like better control over when/what is updated) to maybe get an extra ounce of performance. Of course, Valve is probably in the mindset that people playing it's games online (the only good reason for Steam - since the Won version of Half-Life and its expansions are much better than the Steam version) are using hardware that is half decent. It's a business thing, Ii think.

You have reminded me - I think I got that error once - though I don't remember what hardware I was using, or if my isp's network was being a little screwy. Heck - that could've been the cause for your problem. Besides - when I did get that error - it was a long time ago - I think they've worked it out by now.

Steam is an agressive little bit of software. I love it. Of course, I'm in agreement with most of the people I've heard talk about it - Valve's implementation of it has sucked for some things, but for most - you really need to appreciate what it's trying to be.

Just my $0.03

 

[Malak]

Originally posted by: futuristicmonkey
I completely agree with what you are saying. There should be a way to streamline the offline mode. I say streamline because the idea of Steam was for authentication. It does seem to be a lot better (for Valve, not the pirates) than just the old cd-key in and play forever. Of course, we need to be realistic - Valve is never going to give up Steam.

I have no doubt that Steam impacts the performance of the game. When I first downloaded Steam I was running a Pentium@200MHz with 32mb of ram, etc..Steam made the games nearly unplayable for me. I would love to be able to separate the games from Steam after they have been updated (also, I'd like better control over when/what is updated) to maybe get an extra ounce of performance. Of course, Valve is probably in the mindset that people playing it's games online (the only good reason for Steam - since the Won version of Half-Life and its expansions are much better than the Steam version) are using hardware that is half decent. It's a business thing, Ii think.

You have reminded me - I think I got that error once - though I don't remember what hardware I was using, or if my isp's network was being a little screwy. Heck - that could've been the cause for your problem. Besides - when I did get that error - it was a long time ago - I think they've worked it out by now.

Steam is an agressive little bit of software. I love it. Of course, I'm in agreement with most of the people I've heard talk about it - Valve's implementation of it has sucked for some things, but for most - you really need to appreciate what it's trying to be.

Video games shouldn't have authentication. 1/3 of America doesn't even have a computer, we aren't even close to having a society setup to allow this sort of thing. Every other game has done it fine without this, why should we put up with it for these guys?

The only other thing steam does are things that you could do without it, so again it's useless. It has more negative impact than positive, making it garbage. It's unnecessary and that's why Vivendi no longer publishes for them. Vivendi said ditch it, Valve said no. I'm saying no to Valve.

 

[TheoPetro]

Honestly you have to be quite moronic to not see why people dont like EA. For the same reasons you dont live Valve, Blizzard, and Ubisoft others dont like EA. I have never had a problem w/ an Ubisoft game. Not one. Had 1 small problem w/ a Blizzard game once and their customer support fixed it within a day. When the HDR patch came out and screwed up the game for alot of people Valve got the patch to fix it out within a few days. You are so infatuated with EA that you disregard all their shortcomings (how someone can disregard ALL of EA's faults is mindbogeling). YOU have had problems with the other 3 companies you mentioned and you dont like them because of that. A ton of people have had many more problems with EA and thats why they dont like them. Do ya get how these two are linked?

You + Problem with Blizzard, Ubisoft, Valve = You hating Blizzard, Ubisoft, Valve

Rest of world + Problems with EA = A WHOLE LOT OF PEOPLE HATE EA

I honestly dont know how to make this any more apparent to you. If this thread was created just to be annoying and make trouble then youve accomplished your goal. Kudos to you retard. Your failure to realize why EA sucks from these posts (which have vary clearly stated many reasons) has caused you to post more annoying repetative garbage. Im pretty sure the Anandtech community has gotten dumber because of your posts.

Now say again you dont get why people hate EA. Its comming I know it is.

"Durrrr i duhhh dont understand...... blaaaaaaaaaa blummmm deeeeeee"

~sigh

 

[boyRacer]

I have no problem with EA.

My problem is Sony who bought the F1 license, locking everybody else out. F1 games on consoles blow.

 

[Malak]

The difference is, I've worked directly with people at gaming companies. Mythic's customer service is one of the worst I've seen, but Blizzards was down right offensive. I don't even have a blizzard game and I had to deal with them, which means trouble.

 

[futuristicmonkey]

Originally posted by: Malak

Video games shouldn't have authentication.

Oh really? Make piracy legal -- it'll have the same effect.

1/3 of America doesn't even have a computer, we aren't even close to having a society setup to allow this sort of thing.

Care to post your source for this info?

Anyways - why would I even care only about the USA. I'm from Canada -- and there are many others on this board from Canada, Europe, Asia, etc.. that also pay for games and software. If any game company only sold games to the USA they'd be foolish -- the other countries Canada, the UK, Australia, anywhere...are a huge consumer base.

 

[Malak]

Piracy isn't legal now and the gaming industry isn't taking a nose-dive, why should we make it harder for paying customers to play their games?

I wish I could post a source, monkey, I just read this article recently too. It was commenting on how broadband still only affects half of internet users in america, they also commented that 1/3rd of the households in america don't even have computers. That will change drastically in the future since not only are companies providing free wi-fi, companies like Dell are handing out computers to those people who don't have them.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Originally posted by: VIAN
-Battlefield, even after all this time, still has bugs.

-BF2, released half assed and at a higher pricepoint of 55 dollars, that was supposedly due to development time. Highly buggy, missing critical features that seemed like they put almost no thought in the game, other than graphics, which is also an annoyance to configure. The inconveniance that BF2 is.. is such that the game must've been beta when it was released. Still, 6 months later, many issues aren't resolved.

-BF2 expansions look like crap. Clearly something that they should've put in the regular BF2 game, but held it back so that they could sell it to you as a premium. It's not like it's a lot of content anyway. 30 bucks they will charge you for this lack of content expansion to the original game which still, by my standards is in it's beta stage. Apparantly these people shouldn't even be programming if they can't understand the concept of procedure.

-How would you like it to have paid 55 dollars for a game that doesn't work properly and then be forced to watch they're logo. EA Games, Challenge Everything.

Aside from that last part, isn't that DICE's responsibility? I always thought that EA Games and other publishers were responsible for advertising, the release date, and financial stuff like that. Eidos published Deus Ex, a great game but extremely buggy, like all of the other games that came out of Ion Storm. Eidos also published the Hitman games, all of which were extremely stable, which all were developed by Io Interactive.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Aside from that last part, isn't that DICE's responsibility? I

EA owns over 60% of DICE's stock last i checked...

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh

Aside from that last part, isn't that DICE's responsibility? I

EA owns over 60% of DICE's stock last i checked...

Was it that way when DICE released 1942 and Vietnam?

 

[swatX]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
Man, i sure do love this bug in BF2 where my teamies appear red to me and in enemy uniform!

Hey.... my all seeing eye is not working with BF2... and neither is gamespy arcade.

Wait........ did i just have a crash to desktop?

Damn..... Look at what EA did to Westwood, my favorite RTS game maker is now only a shadow of its former glory and my how everything after Red Alert 1 sucked.

Damn, there goes the Wing Commander series as well as crusader.... RIP Origin studios.

What??? Exclusive deals with the sports franchises, damn... my choices will be limited this year.

Why am i having to pay $50 for a game that has not left beta stage?

It is a good thing BF1 came out of beta... 1 year after its release.

THE GAME IS MADE BY DICE NOT EA!

 

[n7]

EA is evil.

End of story.

 

[igowerf]

Originally posted by: Doom Machine
its called smart business practice, maybe if you owned a company and something like this not only helps you stay in business but ensures better paid employees,yourself and more investors...perhaps you would think different, if not then you'd be likely finding a job working for someone else.

Better paid employees? EA was sued last year because they weren't paying overtime. EA was very well known to be a terrible place to work with employees pulling 80 hour work weeks for months at a time to churn out game after game.

Remember EA Spouse? After all the bad press, EA finally released a memo promising better treatment of their employees, but the improvements weren't that great: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9589_22-5611293.html.

...plans to make some employees eligible for overtime pay but not offer those workers bonuses or stock options.

The lawsuits started in late 2004 and these "improvements" came around April 2005. Awesome company. :roll:

 

[igowerf]

Originally posted by: HamburgerBoy
Was it that way when DICE released 1942 and Vietnam?

According to this article, EA only owned 19% of DICE when those games were released. EA was the publisher for both games.

 

[Dethfrumbelo]

EA has turned many good developers and small publishers into empty husks.

 

[TheoPetro]

As soon as EA is involved its downhill from there. Even if the orig team is kept intact and noone is lost the insane deadlines imposed make it vary hard for a team to put out a quality game. Coding for games is hard enough as it is without someone forcing you to put in 60hr weeks. It just pisses me off that fun ideas get screwed up because of time constraints. What would be an awesome game comes out halfassed and unfinished.