Someone outEA's EA

 

During the week a rather interesting story broke. But first a bit of context.

I have spoken at length on this blog about lootboxes in video games and how much I despise them. About how incredibly damaging they can be to young minds and those with gambling addictions. I have talked about the publishers who control the boxes and how in the case of Electronic Arts they call it “surprise mechanics” and how adamant they are that it is not gambling.

Their cardinal argument against the gambling accusation is that you can't cash out, and that there is no real monetary value attached to the contents of said lootboxes.

So on to the story at hand. This week allegations appeared on social media that shows how one or more employees at EA are selling the most sought after FIFA player cards straight to customers, bypassing the lootboxes completely. I'm not going to go digging around after the screenshots with the evidence (if it is true), but there are plenty of videos on Youtube where you can see them for yourself.

In a nutshell, the person(s) contacts people and offers to transfer these ultra rare cards straight into their accounts for real money. Money in the range of 600€ - 1700€ per deal. The cards in question are incredibly difficult to get, so hard in fact that many players have spent thousands of dollars on card packs without even getting one of them. So one can see why this under the counter deal is so tempting. You're pretty much paying the same amount anyway, but with a guaranteed outcome.

EA responded with lightning speed stating that they take the allegations very seriously and that they have launched an investigation. Should they find anything they promise to take swift action. 

Pretty much what one would expect them to say.

The real kicker here isn't that EA is capable of responding promptly to scandals even though they never do so when people and governments talk about gambling and children, but that this A. demonstrates a tangible monetary value on things they claim has no value and, B. they only care when their own bottom line is affected.

Granted everyone and their hamster already know that EA only cares about money but it is funny nonetheless. There exists shady third party sites where players trade and sell these cards for real money, but EA has always maintained that they have nothing to do with these sites, and that they aren't EA's problem.

If it turns out that this story is true, and it very much looks like it is, it's going to be interesting to see if it has any impact on the governmental claims that lootboxes really are gambling and that games like the FIFA games actually are unlicensed and unregulated casinos. After all, real casinos are monitored, regulated and they pay hefty fees in order to be allowed to operate. They odds of winning are also regularly inspected. Slot machines, roulette tables, etc. are constantly checked to make sure they remain legal. Meanwhile companies like EA can do whatever they like with the odds of winning valuable cards in their games. No oversight, no control, just pure profit. As long as you don't have a conscience.

Of course there is the option that the allegations are true but that EA manages to bury the evidence to control the damage. Either way I'm sure EA is very surprised at these mechanics...

That's that and all that. Join me again next time for more Eccentric Spheres. Until then, have a great week and stay safe!

It is 2020!

Hello and welcome back to Eccentric Spheres in 2020!

Over the Holidays, I went and got a bit of flu, which I thought I had gotten rid of, but the damn thing has crept back on me, and it feels like I have more phlegm in my head than brains.

But you are here, and the show must go on!

In game news, things seem to not have changed all that much. The biggest news story at the end of 2019 was the hack/exploit in Fallout 76 that allowed the cheater to empty peoples inventories from a distance. So you'd be walking along, minding your own business and – POOF – you'd be walking in nothing but your underwear and all your stuff would be gone. If the hacker was really mean, he could also take your pipboy, meaning that you wouldn’t be able to access your inventory anymore, meaning you were stuck in your underwear forever.

Bethesda claims to have fixed it, but people in the know say that all they did was put a band-aid on the problem, and that it's only a matter of time until the next exploit comes along.

I understand why a live-service game is so attractive to the money-suits, but making one and keeping it running at a level that keeps the masses playing is really hard. You can't just take any old thing and make it live-service. That won't do.

Also from last year: Star Wars The Fallen Order seems to be an honestly good game, with none of EA's usual nonsense. Just a good single player game and that is it.

Moving into 2020, the first big piece of game news concerns the famously bad WWE 2K20. As the name suggests it's WWE wrestling, by 2K games. It looked worse than the previous titles in the series, and was so full of bugs it could intimidate an anthill. Well, as soon as the clock ticked over to 2020 the game stopped working. Indeed, you read that right, the game was so sloppily programmed that it refused to play in the year it's supposed to be for!

Speaking of sports games, I read an article the other day that lamented the fact that “all” sports games are held by either EA Sports or 2K games. Both companies are more interested in milking money from whales than making good games, which is of course an awful thing, but it got me thinking. EA and 2K have the official licenses for the big sport franchises, not the sports themselves. So yeah, no one else can make NFL, NBA or FIFA games, but perhaps the time is right for someone else to step in and just make a good game without the franchises.

Take city builders as an example. Back in the day, the big dog was SimCity. No one could touch them and they ruled the roost. Until SimCity 4 came out and failed super hard. In a nutshell, the game was lousy to begin with and had to be played online at all times, even though it was basically single player. On day 1, the login servers broke and no one could play the game at all! Que furious fans and an apologetic Maxis and EA claiming there was nothing they could do. The game had to be played online, period. Until a fan wrote a patch in less than an hour that made the game run with no internet needed.

That was the death of SimCity, but it left the door open for Cities: Skylines, an indie city builder that has become a huge success because it is a good game. I don't see why this couldn't work for sports. Sure, a FIFA fan wants to play the official stuff, but when it's so bad... there has to be space for indie games as long as they are good.

Well that's what I can wring out of my snotty brain. Join me again next time for more Eccentric Spheres, and until then, have a great week!

Ethical and Fun?

Today I thought a look at a piece of recent gaming news could be interesting.

A couple of days ago, EA's VP of legal and government affairs, Kerry Hopkins, appeared in the UK before a parliamentary committee to talk about lootboxes. There has been a lot of press about them in the recent couple of years due to strong allegations that they prey on people with poor impulse control and indeed teach/train children to gamble.

At the hearing, Hopkins interrupted an MP to correct him that they “don't use the term lootboxes” at EA. This isn't only rude, but a blatant lie. EA has, black on white, used the term on multiple occasions, even as a selling point. Hopkins went on to state that EA now calls them “Surprise Mechanics” and that like Kinder eggs they are, “both ethical and fun”.

This went over as well as one could expect on the internet. Surprise mechanics is a, frankly bullshit, term that means nothing outside of a corporate boardroom. A nonsensical attempt to cover up their greedy, moneygrubbing ways.

Then we have ethical and fun... They don't get to state what is ethical. Not even a little bit, no more in fact than I can state that this blog post is ethical. That's up to you to decide. As for fun? Come on... pull the other one.

However, the sheer gall to compare their “surprise mechanics” with Kinder eggs and other toys with random content is galling and inaccurate. When you buy a Kinder egg, you know that you are getting a tasty chocolate treat, followed by a really cheap little toy. That's it. EA likes to put game winning elements into their boxes. Their products are devalued without the extra content they sell you separately in an expensive and random manner. Shame on you EA. Shame.

It is no surprise that EA and indeed certain other big publishers are getting desperate concerning lootboxes. They are enormously lucrative, raking in hundreds of millions in revenue each year, and

no business wants to loose that kind of money. That's obvious. They are however already illegal in the Netherlands and Belgium, and now the UK and US are looking hard at them.

Of course the AAA industry is scrambling to defend their garbage, that's a given, but the fact that EA is changing the name and calling them ethical demonstrates that they know the boxes are bad for people. Otherwise they would be defending them as they are, not trying to weasel out of the dilemma sideways, which is what they are doing.

No one else gets to do that, and EA is no different. A burglar can't stop the police by calling his activities a “surprise visit” and a “moral readjustment of wealth”, can he? No, of course not.

Time will tell how this will end, but I for one hope that the politicians have the ethical backbone to protect the people and not the corporations. For once.

That is it for this time, tune in again next time and until then, have a great week!

How not to design a game.

On Tuesday, last week, gaming news site Kotaku published a long article by Jason Schreier concerning BioWare's latest game; Anthem. He talked to 19 current and former employees and their tale is both sad and baffling.

Following Anthem's development was weird for me, personally. From the footage shown, you flew around in futuristic combat armors, sort of like Iron Man, and you fought some type of enemy, but that was it, that was all I could puzzle out. Was it an RPG? A Mass Effect style action RPG? A Battle Royale? No one knew and the only answers BioWare gave were even more confusing.

Thanks to Jason Schreier's article, it has now come to light that BioWare didn't really know either. Reading the article (and fair warning, it's long) was almost surreal. For fifteen years, the name BioWare stood for quality and excellence. They made games like Knights of the Old Republic (Kotor), Jade Empire, Mass Effect 1-3, Dragon Age 1-3... Not exactly small potatoes, you know?

But now? Mediocre performance to hot garbage, depending on who you ask.

The amazing talent that made the games I just listed are no longer with the company, they have in fact been hemorrhaging talent over the last few years. Management is in shambles, with executives believing in “BioWare magic” instead of listening to their developers. A toxic work environment and since they sold out to Electronic Arts, dumb decisions from above. It's actually kind of amazing that they produce anything at all, really.

If someone wants to make a sitcom about a dysfunctional game company in the vein of The Office, all they have to do is use Jason's article as a foundation for the script. It's that mind-boggling.

I highly urge you to read the article in full, but here are some highlights:

Anthem was in development since 2012 but it was actually made in a mere 18 months, as they kept floundering about, playing with concepts, designing by committee and constantly starting over.

Two weeks before E3 2017 the game was still called Beyond. They had shirts printed up and all. Then EA told them to change the name as they couldn't get the trademarks to work. They changed the name two weeks before they announced it to the world... Wow...

BioWare's main studio in Edmonton refused to listen to their studio in Austin, because they are inferior, somehow.

EA demanded that they would use the Frostbite engine, even though it's not an engine suited for this kind of game. Even though no one at BioWare really knew how to use Frostbite. Even though they were supposed to get lots of technical support and never really got it. The list of horror goes on...

At this point I'm sure you're starting to get the point and still it's actually worse. As I said, read it. Here's the link:

https://kotaku.com/how-biowares-anthem-went-wrong-1833731964

Well that's that. Until next time, have a great week!

Big does not mean Smart

It's been a tumultuous start of 2019 for the biggest boys in the video game playground.

EA's flagship Battlefield V had undersold like crazy, with pre-orders lagging 85% behind its main competitor Call of Duty, and that's only the start of that games problems, as player numbers are reportedly abysmal.

Bethesda keeps floundering about like a drunk elephant. Back in December, I talked about the bag controversy, their refund issues and their accidental leak of sensitive customer information.

Now, it keeps going. In the new years patch, they broke essential parts of the game, though they are now fixed, but not before tired players dubbed it Y2K19.

Then there is the Nuka Dark issue. In Fallout there exists a drink called Nuka Dark, which is essentially a 35% alcoholic coke, and in November (I believe), they announced the real world Nuka Dark product, a bottle of rum that looked like the in-game bottle. Together with shipping it clocked in at about $100, but when fans finally got it, they were outraged to find that it was a cheap plastic shell around a normal bottle, containing an equally cheap rum. Maybe not a case of false advertising, but certainly misleading. It wasn't stated anywhere that this was the products true nature, so in the absence of contradicting information, it was natural for people to assume the bottle itself would be glass in the iconic Nuka-Cola shape. Needless to say, but I'm saying it anyway, no one is happy about this.

Then we turn to Blizzard-Activision. Within a week (more or less) both parts of the game giant lost their Chief Financial Officers. The Activision CFO left to take up the same position at Netflix and shortly thereafter, the Blizzard CFO also quit. One wonders why?

Then came the big shocker: Bungie split with Activision and took the Destiny IP with them. In case you didn't know, Bungie developed the (mostly) beloved Halo franchise with Microsoft, before starting their multiplayer sci-fi shooter Destiny. They then partnered with Activision, and the controversies started rolling in.

Now, free from Activision, and popping champagne bottles in the office, Bungie is free to do what they want. However, they would do well to remember that they can't hide behind Activision anymore so any and all screw-ups are theirs to own.

Last year at the controversial Blizzcon, they talked about their E-Sports scene and how well it was doing and how it would grow in 2019. Six weeks later they axed all support for Heroes of the Storm. Preceding this move was a survey that looked at what people felt about the game. Now, a survey is circulating concerning Hearthstone, their Warcraft themed card game. Is Hearthstone next on the chopping block? In either case, Blizzards now former CFO warned before she left, that costs had to be cut. Ominous news for Hearthstone fans.

Finally, fans of the Alien franchise were excited when the official Twitter account started teasing a new game in the franchise. The tease seemed to hint at a sequel to Alien: Isolation, but then the bomb dropped when it was announced that the game in question is Alien Blackout, a mobile game. Naturally, people were pissed again. Apparently 20^th Century Fox is as clueless as Blizzard-Activision when it comes to the western video game market: we don't want mobile games. By all means, sell them in Asia and to whoever else wants them, but stop announcing them as a big deal to PC and console gamers, please.

That's that though. Join me again next time for more Eccentric Spheres and until then, have a great week!

The lootbox drama

So, the international lootbox controversy continues.

If you're not in the know, a rising trend in recent years in the video game industry has been to sell players so called lootboxes. In benign situations, these boxes are awarded for free in-game, and only contain cosmetic items. No game changing content at all.

But, in many games, these boxes have essentially replaced progression. Instead of being given some kind of increase in ability or equipment designed to be fun and fair, you get boxes of random stuff. Stuff that are completely game changing if you are lucky. To make matters worse, unscrupulous developers and publishers also sell these boxes for real money. Not in-game money, but actual dollars and cents, giving players who are willing and able to wave their credit cards around an unbeatable advantage.

This is the short version, it goes much deeper, but for the purpose of this post, this is what you need to know.

Now, in the past year, governments and legislative bodies have noticed the fury of players sickened and outraged by these business practices. Especially when the words “Gambling” and “Children” started being bandied around.

The problem is that in many games you can win rare in-game items, items that can then be sold off to other players for real money, even up to thousands of dollars. Again, that's actual dollars and euros. And unless their parents are paying attention, children are doing this.

It began small, with Belgium. Belgium went to far as to deem these lootboxes as illegal gambling and banned them on penalty of heavy fines and potential jail time. The AAA game publishers recoiled in horror but complied. All except Electronic Arts (EA). They refused to give up their supreme cash-cow, FIFA 18 (with 19 on the way). EA claimed that they don't agree with the interpretation of the law, and kept on selling in-game stuff for real money. Belgium wasn't too happy and are now dragging EA kicking and screaming to court. If Belgium wins (and I hope they do), EA could be fined about $1.8 million or so, and someone could be going to prison. We'll see how that goes.

But our saga does not end there. My native country of Finland has also jumped into the fray. The Finnish police are now investigating if these lootboxes are breaking the law. In Finland you must have a license from the government to run anything even remotely gambling related. My information might be a little outdated, but at least it used to be that if your club or school wanted to run a lottery for whatever prizes you had, and the tickets cost real money, you had to get the approval of the police. So I can understand why the police are looking into this.

But wait, there's more.

A panel of experts in Australia has decided that this kind of system of lootboxes are absolutely gambling and now, 15 countries and the U.S. State of Washington are scrutinizing the disgusting little boxes. The countries are:

Austria

Czech Republic

France

Gibraltar

Ireland

Isle of Man

Jersey

Latvia

Malta

The Netherlands

Norway

Poland

Portugal

Spain

UK

If even a few of the bigger countries come down against lootboxes with the same kind of penalties as Belgium, then the AAA publishers are screwed. Their golden geese are slaughtered and it's all their own faults. The standard excuse is that it's too expensive to make games these days, but many many developers are managing it just fine without predatory micro-transactions. Imagine if the car industry did the same. You buy a car, but there are no seats and the roof is a net. All because it's too expensive to make cars. Yeah right.

As the drama unfolds, I'll be talking about it here. And until next time, have a great week!