i worked at EA Several years ago. I can only imagine how bad it is now. At the time I worked there though, I could not believe the bullshit I was dealing with at that studio. I’ve never seen anything like it anywhere else in the game industry. The most hostile work environment I’ve ever witnessed. When I was there they were literally making shit up about their employees to get out of paying them their bonuses.
Hell yeah, die!
theyre not dying, theyre just moving all of their studios to the middle east. mark my words.
So… like before but with AI thrown in there? Ok.
Business as usual then.
They destroy everything good. Sims studio. Bioware, who in all fairness bought in back before EA was so blatantly terrible.
Not sure who is churning out the latest Sims crap given the lack of studio for it. 3 was thoughtful and had fun CAD software. 4 is crap, with no CAD.
Maybe there will be a new AI produced ME installment. I’m sure it’ll be top notch.
They bought BioWare in 2007, which is well after EA killed Bullfrog and a bunch of others I don’t remember.
And yet some of BioWare’s best games came out in 2007-2012 or so.
Then in 2012 the founders quit
Sims has such low bar, that EA might make it full slop
Seems like every company that is listed as a stock is just a pump and dump for CEO billionaires nowadays
The exact opposite happened to EA. It was publicly traded before, then bought by Trump’s son-in-law and Saudi Arabia, but also they took a massive loan to buy it and most of that loan was added to EA’s debt, not in any of their own names. So now EA is in a metric fucktonne of debt (went from 2 billion to 20 billion with this deal).
I suspect they’ll just let it go bankrupt once they’ve managed to loot the IP (FIFA in particular) and transfer it to some other company. Then JP Morgan Chase is left holding the bag and Jamie Dimon will have to decide if he wants to sue Saudi Arabia or not.
Leveraged buyouts are the devil. If going public basically guarantees enshittification, a leveraged buyout pretty much guarantees bankruptcy with or without enshittification and cuts.
Yes, that’s capitalism in a nutshell. For anyone who doesn’t understand what we mean when we say “late-stage.” This is the endgame. It always has been.
End game hasn’t started. The real suffering and death is yet to come.
🌎🧑🚀🔫🧑🚀
It’s like that “how many times do we have to teach you this lesson” meme. It’s capitalism. Capitalism always does this. The people calling the shots and keeping the profits aren’t the people doing the work.
People saying “nothing new”, but they did used to have Diversity and Inclusion as a cultural pillar (albeit mostly performative in practice, like the rainbow logo appearing for pride month in every region except the Middle East). I expect that’s all been burned down now.
Bad things can always get worse…
Now they have Sharia Law.
Peak boomer humor
i thought i’d be better after selling to the saudis… /s
Has morale at EA ever been good?
I feel like if it ever was, it was back when their logo looked like this.
Personally feel their “Challenge Everything” phase was bangin’. I hope the employees were doing well though. The games sure felt like they were made by people who cared.
Right off the bat I’m thinking of Medal of Honor: Allied Assault and 007: Nightfire. Oh, and the Battlefield games were fun then, too!
(Uggghh I miss 2142…)
EA SPORTS. IT’S IN A GAY.
Ssx tricky
The Challenge Everything on Def Jam fight for NY was amazing.
40+ years was a good run
A steady decline into complete enshittification over four decades.
I don’t know about that, certainly at the beginning there was no shit.
That’s exactly what “A steady decline into complete enshittification over four decades.” means.
No … that’s not what the history shows?
What are you challenging? That EA is not extremely enshittified by now? Seriously?
I like to think it was back when Spore came out and before at least. Could just be romanticizing, though.
It was just 'here is what these 14 UXR [User Experience Research] studies are saying, so we’ve got to do it this way."
I’ve never worked in games, but in consumer tech apps, any UXR study that’s not done in active collaboration with the team is (almost but not entirely) useless. And that’s assuming they’re done in good faith - actual learning goals, non leading questions, full coverage of user segments. It’s just so easy to use “14 UXR studies” to justify whatever you want to do by stripping out context or cherry picking studies.
Leading questions are good though. Otherwise these studies would tell the truth and be a waste of money /s
This and the news about Reddit stock?
What great news to wake up to. Today’s gonna be good.
The whole (original) article was about how studio employees are suffering under misdirection and robotic corporate management, while EA headquarters faces zero repercussions for objectively terrible decisions. In fact, they are getting rewarded for it.
…I am not celebrating that.
When was this not the case? In the 80’s?
So, it’s just EA being EA. I don’t see what’s new.
Is this article new or a decade old?
