Minuit wrote on Mar 18, 2013, 17:23:

MoreLuckThanSkill wrote on Mar 18, 2013, 16:52:
The real question is, how large of a golden parachute is he going to get? I would assume it'll be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Not only that, he gets his choice of Battlefield 3, Bejeweled 3, Dead Space 3, Mass Effect 3, Medal of Honor Warfighter, Need for Speed Most Wanted, Plants vs. Zombies or SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition.

RollinThundr wrote on Mar 18, 2013, 17:20:
Prolly the best thing that could happen to EA going forward. It's a shame they can't entice Trip to come back and turn EA back into what it originally was, rather than the hated publisher they've become.

JohnnyRotten wrote on Mar 18, 2013, 17:05:

Beamer wrote on Mar 18, 2013, 16:21:
What damages are there?

This isn't the first bad launch. Where's the lawsuit for every MMO? Where's the lawsuit for D3? While this is probably the worst launch, the law doesn't really pay attention to degrees of wrongness so much as wrong.

I would think the primary job of the law was to determine the degrees of wrongness. The practice and execution of law over time seems to back this up this theory rather convincingly. There is not a single penalty for all laws (for breaking any a law, you shall be beaten with a wet noodle), and for most laws there are degrees of penalties, with mitigating and aggravating factors often being take into account.

Beamer wrote on Mar 18, 2013, 16:21:
Why would it go to anything beyond the botched launch? What did EA do wrong? Software is considered imperfect. Entire games have been sold that barely work, but so long as they work they're ok. What was that one? Big Rigs? Hard Rigs? It was a racing game that didn't even have collision detection. Anywhere. You fell through bridges in the tracks. Was there a lawsuit? No.
Why?
Because it's better to have a bit of buyer beware than to force developers to make perfect software (something that is 100% impossible.)

I'm not quite sure how you connect the legal dots from previous example products that did not perform as advertised (hint, hint), to thinking that this automatically binds the consumer or the courts to a value proposition akin to caveat emptor.

I'm sure I could, without a terrible amount of effort come up with hundreds of anecdotal examples of places where the ground seemed ripe for a lawsuit, but they didn't occur. I could also easily do the opposite - lawsuits without grounds. However, both cases would commit the biased sample fallacy, and would not prove my point. However, I would make the point that a lack of previous action on some cherry picked examples does not preclude future action. It's not a precedent when someone decides not to sue. Not suing, of course, may be prudent for many reasons that don't have to do with the "righteousness of the cause".

Beamer wrote on Mar 18, 2013, 16:21:
Are you complaining about the forced always-on, which the box clearly states is necessary, or are you complaining about the broken simulation, which no statute or court has every required?

I'm not complaining about anything, as I'm merely an interested observer here. However, I would point out that courts deal every day in specifics during cases that are not encoded into law. The legal system isn't a hard coded tool in which every decision point about every subject, and its details must be decided in advance. It's a framework in which broad principles can be used to determine if harm has come to one or more parties regardless of the specific and atomic complexity of the subject.

I'd also like to point out that there appears to be a case of special pleading in your arguments - that "gaming" or "software" is somehow outside the bounds of normal consumer and legal practices. I would certainly acknowledge that the technology industry has often caused the legislative and judicial branches a fair amount of heart burn because of its fast evolving nature. However, it certainly doesn't exist outside of either.

Beamer wrote on Mar 18, 2013, 16:21:
And you ask my how I come to the conclusion that no damages can be proven. What damages do you think are involved here?

Lastly, if any game this year would deserve a lawsuit it would be Colonial Marines, but even that has zero chance. Any complaint you could make about CM could be made, to a lesser degree, to every single game ever release (in most cases infinitely lesser degrees.)

Well, I'm not a judge, so I wouldn't be comfortable pretending that I knew what the chances of any hypothetical lawsuit based any any number of approaches could be, but "zero chance" seems to indicate that the power resides completely with one party here. That in, and of itself, would stumble across the inequality of bargaining power issue, which could lead to interesting consequences.

I think there are several angles one could take for both of these products. I've not looked extensively at either, so for both of these, I'm delivering opinions based on second and third hand perceptions of both.

For example, consumer protection laws that deal with warranty and guarantee. Sure, the publishers have come up with some interesting language to try to side step both, but can they? Sure, they've gotten away with it, but that doesn't bind the courts to their actions.

Darks wrote on Mar 18, 2013, 16:55:
This is a Ruse; EA thinks that if they get this guy to step down, people will lay the blame solely on this guy for all of EAS short coming in the past few years. This nothing but a move to try and get people to have that happy feel good feeling. Sorry EA your Jedi Mind tricks don’t work on me.

netnerd85 wrote on Mar 18, 2013, 16:57:
They are saying Sorry

Killswitch wrote on Mar 18, 2013, 16:34:

Beamer wrote on Mar 18, 2013, 16:10:
One is merely lost revenue, the other is real, actual lost capital.

And only potential lost revenue at that. I'm not sure how anyone can't understand the argument you're making when it makes perfect sense, especially from a corporate standpoint. Minimal revenue losses, large PR gains.

I'm sure whoever was willing to purchase these games at the current asking price have already do so. The rest are waiting for low prices or not interested in purchasing them at all. As someone said earlier, EA has smart bean counters and they know exactly what they are doing. And the DLC issue; I don't think that is merely conspiracy theory, that is a reality. People will, in fact, purchase the DLC and decrease EA's losses substantially.

JohnnyRotten wrote on Mar 18, 2013, 16:23:

Beamer wrote on Mar 18, 2013, 16:10:
Ug.
So, for one, EA owns the games they're giving away. They do not own Crysis 3. There are contractual issues to have concerns about. CryTek likely does not want their product to be given away for free just yet, as it devalues the product, even if they get paid for it.

I wouldn't disagree in the least with this statement. However, my question was how this was an accounting nightmare. Reading on...

Beamer wrote on Mar 18, 2013, 16:10:
For another, there are huge accounting differences between giving away something for free that you own and giving away something free that someone else owns. EA giving away DS3 costs it nothing. Nothing at all. There's a possible lost sale, but that doesn't show up in accounting. And there's the cost of distributing on Origin, but that's minimal.

This would be a particularly stupid way to proceed. You book the sale as a loss, and use that against your corporate taxes. You don't just let it vanish into thin air. Actually, I'm not sure if you can - I'm not an accountant, but I've got a feeling that even as a "gift", you'd have to record this somewhere.

Beamer wrote on Mar 18, 2013, 16:10:
If EA were to give away Crysis 3, though, it would have to compensate Crytek. They get paid per sale, unlike EAs internal studios. So EA would owe them money. There'd be arguing about how much, but let's assume it falls at whatever Crytek gets at a $60 sale. Assume it's 60% of that. EA would have to give Crytek $36 for each copy they give away. That's a real loss. That needs to show up on the books.

EA wouldn't be able to change the contract terms of amount owned to Crytek per copy. That's already been decided. The only way this would come into play is if Crytek was being compensated as a percentage of the retail cost, and not a flat fee per copy. I'm not a publisher, or the accounting end of a development firm, so I'm not sure of the normal contract practices here. However, this hardly falls under the definition of "accounting nightmare".

Beamer wrote on Mar 18, 2013, 16:10:
One is merely lost revenue, the other is real, actual lost capital.
I don't mean this to be a jerk, but is it that you don't understand how EAs relationship with these developers work, how accounting works, or did you just not think this through?

I did think this through, and found the specific comment made here as being specious at best, thus my question. Speaking in general, perhaps a better approach would be to attempt a conversation first instead of pretending to be an expert in all things, with opinions being dictated as infallible facts.

JohnnyRotten wrote on Mar 18, 2013, 16:00:

Beamer wrote on Mar 18, 2013, 14:50:

jacobvandy wrote on Mar 18, 2013, 14:41:
Where's Crysis 3? Anyway, I think a cool statement could be made if as many people as possible took SC4, regardless of whether they already have it or not.

EA just published Crysis 3. They don't even own the franchise.
EA developed all the games listed.

They can't necessarily give away Crysis 3, since they don't own it. Yeah, it's over Origin so they could just give it out for free then give CryTek the cash they'd have made on the sale, but that is a bit of an accounting nightmare.

How is booking a sale, regardless of the price, and then accounting for that sale to the developer an "accounting nightmare"? This is what EA does 24/7/365, literally millions of times a year. Having a cost of $0.00 doesn't make it any harder to record or compensate than a cost of $.01, or $googleplex (ok, the latter is pretty hard to record).

JohnnyRotten wrote on Mar 18, 2013, 16:00:

Beamer wrote on Mar 18, 2013, 14:13:
EA offers pretty much their newest releases and you guys just see a trojan horse?

Buying SC and getting DS3 free isn't terrible. Doesn't make up for it, but people here saying "it's just marketing!" as if EA would be getting nearly the return in DLC some people think.

If anything I find it odd that they limited this list so much. It has their biggest recent games. Why not more or less include any game?

It is a trojan horse. There's obviously going to be lawsuits about the game, it's suitability, and the lack of refunds. Accepting this offer will basically make it impossible to participate in any such suit, as you have already been offered, and accepted recompense for your troubles.

As always, IMHO.

ASeven wrote on Mar 18, 2013, 15:47:

Verno wrote on Mar 18, 2013, 15:45:

jacobvandy wrote on Mar 18, 2013, 15:41:
Fuck you, I love hotcakes. Anyone outside of the culinary industry calls them pancakes now, but still.

Me too but they're always disappearing off menus around here

You all should bow to the mighty awesomeness of the waffle!

Hmmmmm waffles....

Hellbinder wrote on Mar 18, 2013, 15:25:
actually beamer... its been "ready" enough to show off at trade shows for months.

somewhere along the line this is about money.

ASeven wrote on Mar 18, 2013, 15:12:

Beamer wrote on Mar 18, 2013, 14:53:
Specifically, I expect some careers to have been ruined over the past 2 weeks.

And deservedly so.

jacobvandy wrote on Mar 18, 2013, 14:41:
Where's Crysis 3? Anyway, I think a cool statement could be made if as many people as possible took SC4, regardless of whether they already have it or not.

Sencho wrote on Mar 18, 2013, 14:32:

edaciousx wrote on Mar 18, 2013, 14:23:
holy crap guys you are all a bunch of ragers. Ever heard of the old saying "Don't look a gift horse in it's mouth?" I mean really, would you just prefer it if EA gave you guys NOTHING at all?

So what if they don't include DLC, like you need it. You guys just cry too damn much.

Personally, I'd have preferred EA release a product that was actually belonging to the SimCity franchise and, perhaps, worthy of that name. Releasing this bastardized, misconceived version and then patently lying - repeatedly - means EA (and their Maxis proxy) deserve nothing but scorn and ridicule.

The biggest mystery is how there are people unwilling to see this? EA's done nothing here worthy of loyalty.

RollinThundr wrote on Mar 18, 2013, 14:22:

Cutter wrote on Mar 18, 2013, 13:49:

RollinThundr wrote on Mar 18, 2013, 13:06:

Creston wrote on Mar 18, 2013, 10:44:
What is this logic you're spewing, Seattle Times. The gun lobby and its bought-and-paid-for assholes Representatives have no time for this kind of prattle!

Creston

Must suck to hate the constitution and to be afraid of tools that do nothing on their own unless a person is using them.

Not as much as it sucks to be a paranoid tin-foil hat wearing bigot and racist though.

Oh Cutter and your strawmen adhom bullshit. At least sweetheart try and be original in the future. I know I know, if you believe in fiscal conservatism and the US constitution, you're clearly racist, a bigot, and insensitive to the awesome benefits of "progress' and cultural Marxism that the left is so fond of. blah blah blah Same ol liberal rhetoric.

Guns don't kill people by themselves, someone has to pull the trigger to shoot. That's fact, you can blame video games, the NRA, whatever, at the end of the day the person using the gun decides to pull the trigger, therefore said person is responsible. There's that big R word that folks like you hate Cutter, Responsibility.