EA Games : Challenge The Consumer (to keep buying our stuff after all the ridiculous stuff we've pulled)


No more. I made an exception for Spore and clearly that was a mistake, since I did want to play it.

The incredible creative talent of Will Wright and his people are being stifled by EA and their approaches. Profit? I work for a large, large company, which sells product and has offices all over the world. I understand profit, and the motive to make it.

You do not make profit by alienating the consumer.

Gaming companies are part of service industry. They like to think of themselves as production, like people who make toothbrushes or steel I-beams or power tools, but they are not - they've in fact, chosen this route for themselves when they stopped letting us control the software that we buy, only handing out licenses.

The gaming companies are selling entertainment, an experience. The ability to experience the game is tantamount to the product that they sell. Most gaming companies, especially small start ups, understand this concept. EA Games has lost sight of their purpose, believing that there is some magical way they can do precisely and only what they want to do and leech even more money from the pockets of their customers. They cannot, and customer service fiascoes like this only prove it. EA games does not lose as much money from Pirates as it does from legitimate normal people, like you or me, that take a look at their extreme practices, put our foot down and say "Enough is Enough" and it's become time for that now.

EA Games honestly thinks that their products are so indispensable to the gaming customer that they can bandy around whatever they want in order to sell more copies and make more money. This is not the case, especially with the recent drop in quality. EA needs to realize that they are not just competing with other big name companies, but with every small gaming company who is attentive to their customers wants and needs (Shout out to Brad and Stardock here!) and they COMPETE with the pirates themselves. They have to show that their product, their service is greater than the one that the pirates provide, which is practically none. The fact that they are fundamentally unable to show this is their single greatest problem, and the most threatening thing to their bottom line. I bought Spore to support Will Wright, and I do not regret that decision. However, I can now see that the "service" of online play that Spore brings to me is more of a problem than a bonus. I will be playing my Spore in offline mode from now on, because I do not want my computer to so much as contact the servers that these people put out.

It is effectively more reasonable from a customer standpoint to pirate Spore and play it offline, without DRM, with multiple installs, with more control over the creatures you create and add to the game, than it is to play it legitimately, and that is why Pirates are a problem for EA Games - because the stripped-down, DRM free version of Spore is in effect a BETTER PRODUCT. It does not take a brain surgeon to realize that a Customer does not want to pay fifty dollars for an inferior product. A product that you can play unrestricted, without a worry of "who's checking up on me every 10 days" or "I can only have one account and my wife and I will have to share."

EA Games clearly does not listen to its customer base. I think that in all honesty it notices the pinch to its wallets and the suits they have in charge, who have clearly never been in any form of retail customer service in their lives but only crunch numbers, blame this disappearance on the Pirates who are "Stealing" legitimate customers of their software.

No.

The only thing that is killing sales for EA Games is EA Games. Oppressive policies which make the customer prove he or she is not a criminal instead of assuming that the game was purchased legitimately are killing the sales. DRM which annoys the consumer or causes their system to do funky things are killing the sales. Ridiculous policies like "Three installs, one account, one registration" are killing sales, not increasing them. Trashy, unfinished games are killing sales, not increasing profits by speeding up the release process. A patch should improve content, not add what should have been completed in the first place - by the time the patch is out, most people have made a decision whether to Buy, Pirate, or Forget.

It's time for EA Games to grow up as a company. They need to realize that the heart of any company is its customers, and the core job of every company is customer service, not what they create but keeping the customer happy. And until they realize this, I'll just take my business elsewhere. Add me to the list of people who will NOT buy another EA Game until this is changed. I took a chance with Spore to support Will Wright, and while he did not disappoint, EA did - unsurprising, but highly disappointing.