During a game of Madden Ultimate Team mode, where I was in
the process of making the Buccaneers look as talented as my 4 year old daughter’s
flag football team, an error message popped up.
Apparently my connection to the EA server had been lost and all the
coins and stats I was racking up wound up being obsolete. What?
I was playing offline against the computer. Why the hell do I need to be connected to the
EA server in order to enjoy some offline gaming against a noobified AI that won’t
t-bag me every time they score a touchdown?
Is this the direction gaming headed?
If so you can count me the fuck out.
I don’t want to be forced to be connected to the internet in order to
enjoy a SINGLE PLAYER GAME! I suppose it
makes sense to be connected to the internet if I want to play against other
people online, but in this particular case I wanted to play alone. Can you imagine a world where you have to
have an online pass to play Skyrim?
On top of Madden 12 being the product of half assed effort,
I have to put up with this type of garbage?
I’m lucky Best Buy was selling it for ten bucks brand new or else I
would’ve had to pay an extra ten dollars for an online pass that I would use to
play OFFLINE! I don’t understand why I
have to pay extra for something that COMES ON THE DISK I ALREADY FUCKING PAID
FOR! I understand why they have the
online pass and I still think it’s a total crock of shit. Here’s a thought for you EA. You know that used game that Joe Schmoe purchased
from the used game section at GameStop and is playing online still constitutes as
ONE FUCKING PERSON playing on your servers.
The original person who bought it didn’t like it enough to keep it in
their library of games, so they let someone else have the fun. You still received payment for the original
copy that was sold, what does it matter who is playing it? That disc is only occupying one slot in your online
community, and that’s if the person is even attempting to play it online. This business practice is absurd and it would
be no better than Nissan charging people extra money to drive on the road if
they purchased their vehicle used rather than brand new. Nope, you can purchase used vehicles without
having to pay the manufacturer anything extra because they’re smart enough to
not rip their customers off. They sold a
vehicle and that’s all that matters, who gives a shit what is done with it
after the fact?
This whole situation got me thinking about how EA was
awarded The Consumerist’s 2012 Golden Poo Award for being the worst company in
America. The decision was based on the
consumers who voted and at the time I figured it had something to do with the
Mass Effect 3 ending over at Bioware.
Perhaps EA got their money hungry hands on that freaking beautiful
franchise and defiled it in the name of douche baggery. I did a little research on this subject
because I couldn’t understand how a company that has published so many great
titles could even make an appearance on this kind of poll. Then again I don’t really purchase many games
published by EA, and if I have, they’re probably sitting on my shelf or I
played them before EA started shitting on their fans. So after doing a bit of research I found out
that EA is disliked because of their business practices, not because of the
Mass Effect 3 ending. You might
recognize some of these useless freaking things such as DAY 1 DLC! Holy shit, what a load of crap is it to work
on DLC before the game is released?
Downloadable content should never be unlocked from the game disc let
alone on day one because if I pay sixty dollars for that disc, I’m entitled to
EVERYTHING that is on it. On top of
that, DLC is supposed to be an afterthought.
Hey, this game is doing really well; let’s support our fans by making
more content for them and in return they can pay us for the extra effort and
support we’ve put into this game. EXTRA
effort! I’m more inclined to pay for DLC
if the company took the time to continually support a game AFTER it was
released. I won’t pay for DLC if it was premeditated
content that was most likely stripped from the original game and is patiently waiting
on the disk I purchased to be unlocked as the developer rapes my wallet.
I remember a time in gaming where DLC was a special treat
that not every game company took the time to produce. Halo 2 was the first time I’ve seen a company
support their game after the fact because they had such a great following that
more content was a necessity to keep the growing horde at bay. Today’s gaming world is much different
because DLC has become a tool for developers to half ass their games so that
they can milk you for more than sixty dollars in order to get the complete
game. Then they taunt the achievement
addicts by offering more lame ass achievements for ten dollars. Before you know it, you spent over a hundred
dollars on a game that really isn’t worth it. However bad DLC has gotten, nothing comes
close to being true evil like day one DLC and DLC that has been included on the
games disc. They write the DLC onto the
same disc that the original game comes with.
So then tell me where the downloadable part of DLC is? Wallet rape, we consumers are being fucking
raped and we don’t even care. We go out
and purchase this SHIT because we are freaking mindless zombies that pay insurmountable
amounts of money on a game just because the word “Halo” is in the title (I’m
guilty of that). But I digress.
Now there are other reasons that people hate EA, but I have
never had any experiences with them.
Reading about them is enough to piss me off though. Things like early server closings or expired
online passes that come with new copies of a game are just a couple of many
small things EA is doing to rip their fans off.
I don’t really need to get into those issues though because I’ve never experienced
them first hand. Other people took the
time to write about it though, so go check it out. Here, here, and here. EA pissed me off for the last time. First they took away NFL 2K, rubbed day one DLC
in my face, and now this needing to be connected to the internet shit? I wish I could say that I started this blog
just being pissed off about needing to be
connected to the internet to play one stupid mode on the crappiest Madden game
I’ve ever played, but now I’m realizing that EA has done a massive disservice to
its fans with their unethical business practices. But with everything that I have to bitch
about I cannot help but wonder if it’s not partially my fault and every other
gamers fault for allowing this to happen to us.
If we don’t stop it now, EA won’t be the only company we’re complaining
about.
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