Somehow, EA gets worse…
I don’t think that is possible
They have not even begun to dark pattern. Be prepared for free mobile game levels of bullshit in $80 “premium” releases. “Micro” transactions on literally everything. Ads crammed into every available inch of screen realestate including unskippable ads that have to be watched in order to use certain game features. Egregious time gates that you have to pay to skip. Multi-layered battle passes and season passes. Limited time bundles and skins. Lootboxes. Rigged match making that makes sure to pair under geared free players with a player who recently purchased a bunch of OP equipment (in order to allow them to easily stomp a bunch of people with their shiny new gear). Pre-release exclusive items that are locked behind a confusing array of premium editions that only the most expensive $200+ bundle will include everything. Massive chunks of what should be basic functionality sliced off and put into day 1 “DLC”. Intrusive kernel level anti-cheat that somehow doesn’t actually stop cheaters but does conveniently conflict with their competitors games. And the cherry on top, everything is a live service game where anything that under performs their arbitrary sales metrics gets axed in under a year, and even the successful games get shut down after a couple years so they can launch essentially the same game again as a sequel.
And all of this will of course be vibe coded and use AI art assets so it will crash constantly and when it actually does run it will stutter and lag on anything less than Nvidias latest $4000 GPU even with DLSS on and cranked to the maximum.
They have not even begun to dark pattern.
My friend, you said this and then went on to describe what all EA Sports games have been doing for the past decade.
Yeah. Now they’ll extend it to all of EA.
Given how useless EA is these days - I’d say the valuable part is simply the monopoly of sports game licenses they have.
They must still own the IP for the thousands of studios they’ve cannibalised.
I’m hoping this will be one of those private acquisitions where they sell off all the assets they’re not interested in actively developing, to squeeze all the value they can out of what they’ve bought as quickly as possible. The studios themselves will be shut down, sure, but at this point all the ones associated with IPs I’m interested in have been so thoroughly gutted that there’s not really any difference anyway.
Saudi arabia is buying up a lot of games lately. I suppose that is their data mining strategy.
Probably a bit of ‘gameswashing’ going on too.
the deal could be announced next week, with Silver Lake, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), and Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners reportedly interested in investing.
Fuck EA hard.
Oh yeah, that’s exactly what I was looking for to make EA better. This same shit is why I deleted Pokemon Go.
Disclaimer: I had already deleted Pokemon Go years earlier when I got tired of the micro transactions and relying on tickets to fight those stupid boss battles remotely.
EA, I will never forgive you for what you did to Dead Space.
I am, or was, a little hopeful that the dead space 1 remaster was an IP health check and what would follow would be a new dead space. According to EA it did do better than they expected so if it was a health check it clearly passed, but theres been no news of any more dead space, so yeah I’m bummed too.
All three outlets cite anonymous sources in reporting that the deal could be announced next week, with Silver Lake, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), and Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners reportedly interested in investing. The Wall Street Journal says the move “would likely be the largest leveraged buyout ever.”
It’s as if satan were being bought out by the lawyers infesting hell.
I stopped playing or buying all their games after Battlefield II remake.
Battlefield II remake, humm… Yes, yes, please enlighten me.
The controversy over the loot boxes.