When a game’s launch goes so overwhelmingly badly that stories about it are still appearing 2 weeks after the official launch date, it’s clear things went horribly wrong. But when it is such a public mess that the CEO feels a need to step down entirely, we’re dealing with a whole new level of failure, the likes of which we’ve probably never seen before. Ok, Enron happened, so there’s been worse failure, but this is still pretty awful. Where did John Riccitiello and the rest of Electronic Arts go so wrong? Let me count the ways.
Before we can even get to the Sim City fiasco (this may be the only time in my life where fiasco doesn’t seem strong enough), it’s important to look at where EA was when Riccitiello took over. In 2007, EA was at the top of their game. Stocks were selling at $60, the company was responsible for some of the greatest studios and games on the market, and everything was looking up. Sure, there were some bumps in the road, but it was nothing they couldn’t brush away. They were looking strong, and things were going their way.
As you can see by the graph in the link above, however, stocks for EA are currently worth less than $20. Arguably their most popular studio, Bioware, saw their founders leave due to the bad treatment and pressures placed upon them by EA, and EA has received a significant proportion of the blame for the Mass Effect 3 ending controversy. They’ve run some of the worst marketing campaigns the gaming industry has ever seen, significantly setting back the industry in the eyes’ of its critics. Oh, and last year, they were named the “Worst Company in America” by the Consumerist (who has them as a #1 seed and a rather larger favourite to repeat as champions this year).
Is this all Riccitiello’s fault? Probably not. He’s only one guy, after all, and there are other higher-ups in EA that also have decision making power. That said, he did make a lot of promises that he then failed to keep. To call his tenure ‘disappointing’ is the understatement of the decade. Let’s just go through the number of broken promises leading up to the Sim City debacle, shall we?
First, Riccitiello spoke of the need to reduce the $60 price point on video games, but even with their publisher owned distribution service, Origin, there hasn’t been a reduction in price of new games at all. In fact, the sale I see on the main page right now is the first sale I’ve seen since Origin came to be, and given the circumstances, that hardly appears to be a true change of heart.
Speaking of Origin, it hasn’t caught on the way that EA hoped it would. While some could argue this can be attributed to Valve’s Steam service dominating the market, I’d like to think it has more to do with the system having several key technical flaws that leave it open to attacks like this. It’s one thing for ridiculous DRM policies to greatly inconvenience the player, but the bug exploited in that article leaves people’s entire accounts open to being hacked directly, leaving 40 million users vulnerable. That’s a whole new level of ineptness. This is such a larger issue than the one that plagued Sony in 2011 and caused enough damage to force a class-action lawsuit…and yet EA won’t say a word about it. Thanks guys. Feel totally safe with your service now.
You know who else doesn’t feel safe right now? Any of EA’s developers. Riccitiello spent a lot of time in 2007 and 2008 talking about the importance of learning from the closing of Bullfrog Studios and keeping their acquisitions afloat. Since then, Pandemic Studios suffered the same fate, closing despite having so much promise in their IPs. And they aren’t the only ones. Just this year, Bioware San Francisco and Visceral Montreal were also forced to close down. When the recession hit in 2009, EA responded by laying off 17% of their workforce (17%!), and those are by no means the only layoffs EA has seen since. So much for stability.
The most insulting part of that last paragraph? EA’s response. In a blog post titled “Transition is Our Friend”, they dismissed a lot of these recent layoffs as little more than growing pains, defending their actions with claims of severance packages for employees that read as fake as you think they do. It’s disgraceful and insulting, especially to all those currently out of a job because of their poor business decisions.
So now you know why Riccitiello was so damn disappointing, but how did EA get to this point? I mean, Dead Space 3 sold over 5 million copies, but while the rumours of the studio closing were proven false, all signs point to EA seeing the game as a financial failure. I repeat: a game that sold 5 Million copies is a failure. This should not happen. So how did it?
As usual, the always brilliant Shamus Young has already touched on the answer: EA really doesn’t know what it’s doing in how it presents itself. It follows horrible business models that make the consumer feel cheated and inconvenienced, and provides poor service that leaves people finding them untrustworthy. Day One DLC, Microtransactions in $60 games, knowingly sacrificing customer service to turn a profit… this isn’t greedy. It’s stupid. Every company is trying to make money. Valve makes tons of money with their services by offering regular sales and making sure their public persona is on the side of the consumer. EA just does it by nickel and dime-ing their consumers until they’re fed up. Guess which one will be around in ten years?
In an industry that is constantly seeing growth (Valve had 50% growth last year), EA is consistently posting losses. Again, Shamus Young covered this in a recent article, so I won’t go into details. For those of you who chose not to follow the link, it essentially boils down to mismanagement of resources. They treat every game like their sports games, even when it makes no sense for them to do so. Team sizes are growing too rapidly and actually making things worse (too many cooks in the kitchen and all that). They live and die by their AAA titles being massively successful (again, 5 MILLION sales was not enough), and their Origin system has failed miserably. The company is a disgrace, and while it’s impossible to know exactly how we got here without actually being in the boardrooms ourselves, the recent Sim City fiasco has shed some light on just how badly things have gone wrong.
Yes, we’ve finally gotten to the Sim City mess, a launch so bad it prompted friend of the blog Clayton Donaldson (HULKGAMECRIT) to write a poem dedicated to its ineptness. It’s not just that it failed; it’s that the game failed on nearly every possible level. First, the servers didn’t work, causing massive wait times for people trying to play the game (and locking many who had pre-ordered the game out of their rightful copy). Then the server problem became so bad that they actually had to remove features from the game just to try to ease the damage. This led to Amazon refusing to even sell the game on their online stores until the problem was fixed. Then, the problem became so embarrassing that EA actually pulled all advertising for the game, asking stores to stop pushing sales until things were under control again. The damage was so bad, EA had to offer a free game (from eight offered) to Sim City players just to try to quell the rage storm surrounding the release.
This alone would be enough to damage most companies forever in the minds of consumers, but the damage didn’t end there. See, all of this mess was caused by the game needing to be constantly online, even for single player play, because according to EA before the game’s release, it was necessary to play the game. Yet a week after the game was released, it was discovered that the forced disconnect when one tried to play offline was all due to a single line of code that, if removed, allowed the game to run just fine offline. EA immediately was forced to backtrack and use claims of “artistic vision” to defend the move, but the lie had already been exposed, and the controversy has eliminated any benefit of the doubt EA could possibly have had on the matter.
Also, the game doesn’t seem all that great. With the exception of a glowing review from Polygon (the review was released before the game was made public and the server problem became obvious), responses from critics have been quite mixed. What’s there is good, but options are limited due to harsh limitations on space and a need to specialize that forces a very different experience from previous games that hasn’t always been met well. Also, traffic AI, a vital part of the game as being able to get from point A to point B quickly is the best and only real way to make money, is horrible, prompting developers to be searching for a fix to the time of this writing. Having to fix problems like this wouldn’t be so bad, but the game was in Beta for a YEAR! How do you not fix a vital flaw in your game with a year’s worth of beta testing? It’s inexcusable.
So is this the straw that broke the camel’s back? Probably not. Though Riccitiello has stepped down as CEO, EA’s response to the whole mess has been cowardly. They’ve backpedaled when confronted with their own inconsistencies, hidden from the media when possible, and have even resorted to threatening consumers who try to refund the game after publicly offering a refund to disgruntled consumers. Oh, and they’ve been trying to alter public opinion by hiring agencies to post fake posts praising the game across social media outlets and popular forums. Stay classy, EA.
This kind of failure should fundamentally change a company forever, but their refusal to accept responsibility is downright insulting to the consumer. EA has refused time and again to own up to their mistakes, and it seems that only voting with one’s wallet will change their mind. So far, this mess of a game has still accrued 1.1 million sales in two weeks. I don’t think any of us will ever fail this well in our whole lives. How many studios have to close down before EA learns their lessons? How many promising IPs will be lost in the process? I dont know, but I do know we’ll find out if things don’t change soon.
One last thing: before you start praising Riccitiello for stepping down in the wake of this disaster, keep in mind he’s taking two more full years of salary and all of his current stock options with him. Accepting responsibility has never looked more like paid retirement. Only at EA.
Chase Wassenar, aka MaristPlayBoy, is the Lead Editor and Founder of the Red Shirt Crew. He won’t be buying any games new from EA until their system fundamentally changes, but he’s not holding his breath. You can read his other articles at ToyTMA, follow him on Twitter at @RedShirtCrew, or email him at theredshirtcrew@gmail.com.
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