I mean the trump regime is very much at odds with progressive society too so it’s a wash I’d say
“shitty company finds out their newest shitty owner is shitty”
As if I needed yet another reason to never buy an EA product again in my life.
The last EA product I purchased new, that the company would have gotten paid for, was Desert Strike for SNES. In 1993.
I didn’t even pay for that one lol. Always a trash company.
EA has been dead for over a decade honestly. With the new Saudi owners they are just being turned into a zombie.
Holy shit you aren’t kidding!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Electronic_Arts_games:_2020–present
I’m looking at the releases and honestly none of those games are Day 1 must buy for me.
I think the Saudis bought it for the sports games. And those games are pretty cookie cutter and they sell well thanks to the chuds.
Most of it seems to be remasters, sequels and EA Sports Game <inser year>.
If you like strategic fps, Battlefield has always been the best game in my eyes. I bought it right before news of the purchase came out… Let’s just say I wasn’t impressed. Fuck the saudis, but Kushner is the real ghoul.
Also skate doesn’t exactly have any competitors. I have always loved skate, and would consider the new one quite enjoyable (if its code wasn’t 50% computer-crashing kernel level nonsense).
When has EA ever been in alignment with progressive society?
June 1st to June 30th. They highlight the lipsevice to LGBT stuff in dragon age
They’re in alignment with a sense of pride and accomplishment, I guess?
Ever since Dragon Age Origins? Their published games ever since then have been incredibly LGBT safe.
Wasn’t that BioWare?
EA owns BioWare, and has since 2007. Dragon Age came out in 2009.
Still was developed by BioWare and not EA.
That’s how these big companies work, they have multiple studios working on multiple games. You still expect the subsidiaries to mostly mirror the top end.
EA will just shut down a studio if they don’t like what they are doing. BioWare is mostly responsible for dragon age. EA helped but not with the original game. My brother worked on that game for months, EA was basically the distributor
Comment:
When has EA ever been in alignment with progressive society?
EA funded the game and put its name on it. That’s as good as EA itself putting out a game full of LGBT characters as far as anyone against LGBT rights is concerned. As you yourself said, they would’ve shut BioWare down if they didn’t like it.
EA was actually considered a fairly nice company to work for in terms of the gaming industry a very long time ago.
EA has always employed warming kettle strategy. Buy an awesome and beloved independent studio, let them just keep doing awesome stuff, and then go “well, looks like you’re not keeping up with our growth targets, guys, guess we need to keep a closer eye on how you’re doing.” And again. And again.
Sounds accurate
EA hasn’t written its games even going back to the MS-DOS era. It’s just a publisher.
Yes they do, they also own a bajiliiian franchises going back decades that are sitting in the scrap heap. But don’t pretend they don’t do their own products ever or never have.
I’ve actually been inside one the studios on multiple occasions m
Published by EA, they’ll allow anything that makes their investors happy and they push for that.
Every time it’s convenient for them and their bottom line. Like literally everytime that benefits them to do so and not a hair longer
They put “art” in their name, thought it was enough concessions to the unproductive concept called “culture” and then they made sure to focus on compensating this benevolent act by creating as many shitty products as possible.
Historical tangent: Electronic Arts was originally supposed to be named “Electronic Artists” (as a play on United Artists, the film company). The whole reason the company was founded was because Atari and Activision made game designers anonymous cogs in the machine. EA was like “we’ll actually pay solid compensations and we’ll actually put your name on the cover, how’s that sound?” But, of course, the founders noticed that they weren’t the artists in question, the game designers were, so they changed it.
Saudi: “Hey you know that part in Mass Effect where you punch a reporter? Can you expand that to a whole game?”
“Hey remember Tali in Mass Effect? Yeah make all the women dress like that”
In fact take it further and cut em up
BONESAW IS READY
Doing the big racist speech to your crew about humans being alone, but without all the awkward cuts to your non-human crew members.
Saudi Arabia is our ally who helped coordinate 9/11.
The Saudis only want ea for the kernal level anticheat in ea games.
Which is odd because we are considering banning tencent due to these concerns.
Despite assurances from management, some workers believe the company will be subject to censorship by its new owners.
Assurances from anyone with an MBA are worth less than nothing. They are professional liars. They pretend they aren’t with the bullshit “optimism isn’t lies”, except it absolutely is when you KNOW your optimistic interpretation is bullshit. It’s like that Dr. Nick bit.
Dr. Nick: “With my diet, you can eat anything you want, any time you want!”
Marge: “And you’ll lose weight?”
Dr. Nick: “You might! It’s a free country!”
If it benefits the company to lie about impending layoffs, then management will lie. It’s baffling how many people have difficulty with this concept.
I don’t know why you got downvoted. This is a valid point.
It’s almost as if people who will “toe the line” are more likely to get promoted to management. Until the leopards come for them as well.
Assurances from anyone with an MBA
What about assurances from MBS?
Then fucking quit?
Better yet, form a union and wreck their little purchase.
Isn’t EA mathematically doomed to die off due to the absurd amount of profit they need to pay off the debt the saudis put on them so that they could own them? Like, who cares about actually working there, you’re as good as already laid off. The sword of damocles is swinging.
A tale as old as time. Hedge fund buys a company. Company has too much debt from the buyout. Hedge fund strips out assets of the company. Company dies.
I think the sword of damocles more dangles menacingly than swings.
The pendulum in The Pit and the Pendulum is the sharp object that swings.
Swinging sounds like you’re giving it a higher chance to miss
Jamal Khashoggi
I’ve been ‘fuck EA’ for a long time, but this buyout has guaranteed I’ll never touch another of their games again under any circumstances.
I’ll never touch another of their games again under any circumstances.
What about the circumstance of having pirated the game?
Do they have any worth the effort?
You’re asking the wrong question. They absolutely have games that are worth the effort, the question is “will they make new games that worth the effort?”
It’s surprising that isn’t obvious.
I’ll allow it.
That shit better be sandboxed and air gapped.
Yeah, I will stop buying, will continue boycotting and avoiding ea games
I mean, you were working for ea
EA was relatively progressive no? You can disagree with their market strategy but it was a liberal, western company.
Even “baiting with progressiveness for profit” matches the pattern of western company.
Good for profit is still good, no? Now you got no good for profit - which seems much worse.
You dorks are so funny. Guess there’s no worker solidarity when it comes to your stupid games.
It was just a joke, I have family friends fired from the FIFA games. It’s good to laugh once in a while, especially at yourself.
Hard to feel good about being bought out by a regime that’s very much at odds with progressive society
… and EA was the bastion of rights and good treatment of people before?
Best thing they can do is quit. Tech workers that continue to stay employed at places like this and military contractors, have no excuse.
I mean paying for your place and food till you get a different job seems like a reason.
Yeah the job market is abysmal right now. I can’t blame them at all if they have nowhere else to go.
That is why they should not quit on the spot. Start applying for job postings and quit once they have a new offer in hand.
That’s what I’m doing.
They should be doing that right now. The tech industry fucking sucks across the board, but tons of folks in the field make excuses because the pay is too good. Regardless of where you work, leave your job board accounts active. I still get tech job listings daily. Even at a pay cut, you’re still above a lot of the struggling working class in terms of income. It’s not like EA being terrible is a new discovery.
Have you seen the state of the games industry? Layoffs everywhere, not sure there’s too many places to jump ship to
gaming and the tech market arnt exactly hiring in large numbers anymore. they might not even find another job if they quit.
OK so work for people that would enslave you if they had a chance and be the problem for a paycheck. Now you understand why corps do what they do. Now you’re the bad guy.
I want you to know it did not take me long to find this.
Yeah, this can’t be a partisan thing. That’s just feeding into the same nonsense division governments manufacture. It has to cross those aisles and educate folks on the fact that all working class are in the same battle against the same collective ruling class around the world. We’re seeing authoritarian regimes forming around the world and they are working together. We have to do the same.
You, 2 weeks ago. Emphasis mine.
So worker solidarity and all that, but "employees who don’t hold shares, including many who are classified as “‘temporary fulltime,’” don’t count. Just like they don’t count for healthcare and labor protections. They’re just villains eh?
Well, one way or another, I agree with something you said. It’s just unfortunate you don’t.
Working for the enemy helps the enemy and the enemy has been around and known for decades (tech was at least one decade) so what the fuck are yall doing besides making excuses to make more money?!
So… where else should I work boss? What business, what employer, is free from the corrupting effects of capitalism? “Independent daycare” like that’s not subject to the same problems as any other small business - power tripping owners, cutting corners to save money, exploiting labor, etc. There is no business in the entire world that is utopic. You know this. So should we all be subsistence farmers? Pick up a weapon and die for a cause? Why do you want everyone to be just as miserable as you?
What a reductive way to see the world. I feel sorry for your anger, you’ll clearly never be free of it for the rest of your life.
Exactly this. EA has been garbage for ages. This isn’t a scenario where a company was going about its business and then suddenly got bought by a military contractor. It’s harder to account for when you’re one day working on software for the airline industry, and then suddenly software for threat targeting. Instead, this is a scenario where EA told everyone exactly how terrible they are, and then doubled down by selling to oppressors (that have also openly displayed how terrible they are for years).
I’ve worked in tech for nearly 2 decades and even the lower end salaries are better than most fields (aside from the obvious ones like medical, law, etc).
Tech is unique. I know because I’ve been trapped in it for years. There is no excuse for working at these companies because tech salaries are all far higher than most other fields, and there are a multitude of other companies to work for that aren’t military and surveillance contractors (not to mention EA has been terrible for years). I’ve had this choice my entire career and have always refused to work anywhere that helped abhorrent industries. I’ve known folks that refused to leave these industries because the pay was too good. This isn’t a scenario where they’re not aware of what the company does. Hell, I know someone that knowingly and willingly builds software for military drones. There’s no fucking excuse and your gotcha was a worthy attempt but I don’t play that kind of bullshit on the Internet.
Edit: this is an unstructured mess but I’m tired and dealing with a family member loss, so fuck it.
Because affording housing and food is such a non-excuse. AI and mass tech layoffs already, but hey, throw away your job before you have a new one just to appease the morally injured. Same shit in every industry.
It’s tech. They’re not starving. There’s no excuse.
Ppl in tech don’t all make hundreds of thousands a year. Ppl are scraping by, especially after the last 5 years of inflation. Y’all have insane expectations you’d never personally meet because this the internet and you can just say shit.
Even the lowest salaries in tech are often still higher than the average salaries in other fields. The bargaining power is rubbish now because tech was too comfortable to unionize, but the salaries are still higher than most blue collar roles. I’ve taken lower salaries in the past myself just to avoid terrible industries—in some cases well under $100k—and they were still higher than other fields.
People are not throwing their lives into economic chaos to satisfy your moral demands and it’s not reasonable to be demanding it to begin with.
No one is demanding anything. I know people in comfy jobs will continue to make excuses to stay, even at companies that have been morally bankrupt well before now, like EA.
It’s hard to have a lot of sympathy since I was homeless after I quit a job due to them attempting to frame another employee. It was years of struggle but I managed to eventually figure out how to survive better without a job at all. If you work for bad people you have to take some of that stink onto yourself. You are the bad guy compared to say, a person that survives running an independent daycare. You don’t get to pretend you aren’t a part of the problem.
Just because you survived homelessness, doesn’t make it a viable solution for all. Expecting that from ppl is expecting way too much.
