From the wonderful people at EA.

There are a few surprises in the list.

Surely the people who bought FIFA Manager 10 for PC, and 2010 FIFA World Cup and Madden 10 for PSP and Wii deserve longer support than that.

 

It's EA we're talking about here, I'm not surprised that they've pulled this sort of shit.

They make crap games on rushed development schedules, support them for a few months with a few patches, and then abandon them to work on either a new game or a sequel. Rinse and repeat.

It's funny: apparently, most of the game developers in the industry now actively try to avoid working at EA due to the working conditions and limitations the management places upon the staff crews.

 

While it's a bit shit for those who play those older games (I still play BfME2 occasionally) online service shutdowns are in a way still better than layoffs if they're looking to save money. As long as they don't get too shitty about independent/unaffiliated support sites and servers going up in their stead, I won't be too bothered.

But if the day comes that they remove online service for Bad Company 2, there will be a reckoning.

 

It's not necessarily saving money with companies of this size, they will go and have gone just as far to maximize profits. If they think that firing three quarters of their employees and shutting down all of their servers would result in a single dollar more in the bottome line than it would cost after factoring in lost business and hurt reputation, they would do it in a heartbeat. That's just how big business works.

And Ichor: EA doesn't care about whether companies are willing to work with them. They just outright buy companies whether they like it or not. They did it to Bioware and Pandemic, and they laid off everyone in Pandemic and closed down the label forever on the exact same day that they bought out some other poor bastards. I've made this rant at least once before on DLP, and I'll keep making it until the revelation that EA is just as bad as Kotick's Activision sinks in.

 

This this this this this.

EA and Activision are killing gaming, I think they represent the very worst of the video game industry.Innovation has come to mean a few tweaks in the engine and features and more ways to charge people for shit.

And the people who do it right (like Bungie) can't compete because of the sheer production power companies like EA has. In the time it takes you to release one fantastic game, they've released three games that are (if you're lucky) exactly the same and will eat at your market share.

And worst of all, they can get away with most of the shit they pull because gaming has become so fucking mainstream. And as anyone will tell the mainstream are the spineless pussies of the universe; that asshole who is willing to pay $15 for a map pack doesn't realise he's fucking everyone over. The same mainstream is probably going to remain dark now and not do a goddamn thing to show EA that situations like this won't be tolerated.

Godd, I can't for the day Microsoft join the game fully, which shouldn't be too long now, as soon as they wrest Halo away from Bungie.

Fuck it, I generally don't play a lot of EA stuff anyway. And if I do it better be quality; no motherfucker is going to scam me out of 60 bucks for Fifa 10 with a bunch of cool World Cup animations.

I'm tired of this whole mentality, the 'we-can-fuck-over-our-customers mentality that a lot of big business seem to have built-in.

/random rant that has very little to do with shut-down servers

Tehan: I was under the impression that a lot of these video game companies are private companies and that EA couldn't buy them out unless they wanted to get bought out.

 

Here's to The Last Guardian. Proud moments for the non-EA/Activision industry, you would hope. Sure, it's a Sony game, but heck, it's awesome.

 

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA~ *dies laughing*

Good one man, I needed that.

(Seriously, though-- Halo was a dogshit FPS that set the bar low for the next few generations of games, and you're trying to say Bungie is any less terrible than EA? Suck a big dick.)

 

At least Bungie actually spend time on their games and try to provide us with brand new features, and y'know actually work on their game.. It should be noted though that I fully jumped on the FPS and (Halo) band-wagon with Reach, so I have no idea what the fuck happened before that so...yeah.

Trust me, if developers adapted a lot of the shit Bungie did, we would be better off.

It's nice to put in a new game and get changes instead of a game you could tell was built using a specific formula.

1- Make awesome first game
2- Rush second game.
3- Dumb down everything.
4- Throw in ways of charging more (Fifa), add a few features.
5- ???
6- Profit.

 

LOL, what? Sony hates gamers. Sony hates customers. Sony hates YOU.

 

[04:13am] [mib_3z1i8b] Halo is miles beyond CoD just because of variety. But then again, I'm biased, sci-fi will always be my favorite game genre.
[04:13am] [Coyote] Then go get UT2k4 and play a real man's FPS instead of your pussy frat boy bullshit.
[04:14am] [Coyote] (In Halo) You move like a goddamn slug, you're using a goddamn controller so you can't aim nearly as well as with a mouse, and the weapons have zero impact.
[04:14am] [Coyote] How the hell is Halo supposed to be entertaining?
[04:16am] [Zombie] Halo isn't entertaining.
[04:16am] [Zombie] Its linear game play
[04:16am] [mib_3z1i8b] The weapons are meant to have zero impact dude.
[04:16am] [Zombie] With very little imagination.
[04:16am] [Coyote] Then how the hell are they supposed to be satisfying to use?
[04:16am] [Coyote] At all?
[04:16am] [Coyote] >meant to have zero impact
[04:16am] [Coyote] >terrible design choice
[04:16am] [mib_3z1i8b] It's the Gravity Hammer, the sticky grenades, the splatters, the armor lock kills etc...
[04:17am] [mib_3z1i8b] Shields do tend to tke the sting out of bullets.
[04:17am] [Zombie] The same shit that was in the first one, and recycled and with a new label.
[04:17am] [Coyote] Sticky grenades are retarded, Splatters were done better by UT2k4, the Gravity Hammer is a shittier impact hammer...
[04:17am] [Zombie] You're just too fucking stupid to notice the change.
[Coyote] Shields are "go sit in a corner and suck your thumb for a bit" instead of "go run and pray you don't get shot down trying to snag that health kit"

TL;DR: Halo doesn't actually have new features of any note that weren't done before and better by non-shitty FPSes, Bungie did not do a damn thing new, and you're a fucking retard if you think any differently.

 

With the Bioware-Pandemic buyout: the two companies merged into VG Holding Corp to better compete with the big boys with the help of venture capital firm Elevation Partners, and part of the deal was Elevation Partners board member John Riccitiello becoming the CEO of VG Holding Corp.

If you're wondering where you've heard the name John Riccitiello before, wonder no longer - these days he's better known as the CEO of goddamn EA. That's right, he went directly from VG Holding Corp CEO to EA CEO at or around the same time that EA started negotiations to buy VG Holding Corp. The end price involved $620 million to the stockholders of VG Holding and around $200 million cash and stock to unnamed individuals within VG Holding.

So yeah, I guess that Bioware-Pandemic 'wanted' to get bought out - except the ones doing the wanting were all shareholders from Elevation Partners and the guy about to get a job as CEO of EA, with just enough dissenting voices within the company silences by huge bags of cash.

That's where EA spends all their money. They buy up these companies, keep the original staff around just long enough for the currently in-progress game to be finished, and then quietly lay off most of the staff and close down their offices and fold the remaining employees and IPs into the rest of EA, and by the time the fans of these IPs notice that the series has turned to mass-produced shite they've bought up a shiny new IP, and then they finally let the shambling corpse that is the studio's brand name die a quiet, shameful death. It's the slash-and-burn approach to video games, and the only reason EA doesn't catch as much flak over it as Activision is that Riccitiello doesn't make a habit of twirling his mustache and cackling like Kotick does.

Weeeeeellllllll...

 

Lol epic comic. And I'm quite aware sony are idiots, I just like the Ico series. And hate EA.

Meh, I use PC more nowadays. rFactor & Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 ftw.

I must be the only hardcore sim racer on this place...

 

This is standard practice in the industry and not something special.
Unpopular games are shut down after a few years or sometimes even months.

 

Stupid EA shutdowns are keeping me from playing LOTR: Conquest multiplayer. Which was shitty, but still, I wanted that Platinum D8

 

It's also standard practice for priests to bumfuck kids.

 

That simile is bad and you should feel bad.