Electronic Arts: Greed Is Not the Problem

[MetalSoup]

Thought this was a very good read. It's fairly long, but they make some good points.

I don't have a problem with companies making money. I don't think "greed" is a bad thing. I don't have a problem with people getting rich. What I do have a problem with is wasted potential and disgraceful incompetence. What's important is not how much you're making, but how well you're using the resources at your disposal.

Ten years ago Valve Software was a medium-sized development house. They had one successful game (Half-Life) and a collection of expansions for it. They didn't have massive cash reserves by today's standards and they didn't have any direct influence over the market. They were, in dollar terms, probably less successful than Mojang is today. But Valve anticipated a coming shift in the market (the move to digital distribution) and they figured out how to meet that need.

A decade later, they are now a multi-billion dollar behemoth. They own Half-Life, Team Fortress, DOTA 2, Portal, and Left 4 Dead. Every one of those franchises is critically acclaimed, commercially successful, and instantly recognizable, even to the point of spawning memes outside the gaming community. Valve controls an enormous majority of PC digital sales, holding a market share that looks like Microsoft Windows in the late 90's. They're branching out into selling software and they're launching their own console. Their sales are so successful that people joke about how Steam sales make them poor by getting them to buy games they never knew they wanted and spend more than they ever intended.


Valve has done a lot of things to make a lot of money. You could even accuse them of being "greedy". I mean, why launch Steam when they already had a successful and profitable game? Why sell indie games when they were already doing well selling AAA titles? Why launch a console when Steam is doing so well? Valve is purportedly sitting on a mountain of cash, and their customers love them. Nobody complains about how Valve is "greedy" for having sales, for selling indie games, or for making a console. Instead, people are lining up to give them cash.


Greed is not the problem.

Read the rest here.

TLDR: The problem isn't greed. The problem is that this company is incompetent.

 

[DarthMol]

Very insightful article, I agree that EA's problem is not greed but rather utter incompetence. Also with such a broad selections of games they're struggling to find a "fits-all" approach to appeal to their market whereas Valve is quite clued-up about the type of person they're aiming to please and so their marketing style works well for that demographic.

You also get the feeling that Valve care about their games and are aware that it's not just about sales but also about the image of the game, "Is it something we can be proud of?" "Is it a game that gamers would be proud to own and tell others about?"
With EA it the impression given is thatit's all about the sales numbers - who cares if everyone hates the game a month or two down the line? The don't seem to have respect for the IP

 

[PsychoFish]

Valve does seem to get that quality always trumps quantity when it comes to titles and IP. I generally don't have much of an issue with EA and the way the do things as some of my favourite games are published by EA (Crysis, Spore, Dead Space, Mirror's Edge, Mass Effect) but of late they really seem to want to force you to play online or pay for things that really make little sense.

Mass Effect 1 & 2 were brilliant and I have played them over and over...ME3 was a great title, but I don't want to play it online just so I can get a better ending. What if I want to play it again in 5 years time after they switch off their servers? Dead Space 1 & 2, again, pretty good titles en then Dead Space 3 happened...I'm still unhappy with it (and haven't bothered to complete it).

I'm just hoping they don't stuff up Titanfall or Mirror's Edge 2, but it's still early in the game for these titles.

 

[Snare]

Yeah, by definition all capitalist corporations are greedy; however EA is letting that is letting their short term desire for money affect the way the company itself is being run.